TL;DR
I created a game reliant on making choices through capacitive touch controls, making the players' choices more visceral. The two choices are represented by a lemon and a cookie, standing in for choices that are either safe and boring or fun and unsafe. The game was designed to behave as an interactive picture book, and originated from the symbolic meanings and practical applications of lemons.
Details
The Story
Sweet and Sour is the story of a father who happens to also be the captain of a pirate ship, and his daughter who comes aboard to live with him. Throughout the short tale, the player makes choices as the father about how the daughter is treated on the ship.
The story ends differently depending upon the number of lemon choices versus cookie choices; if you go all lemon, your daughter becomes lonely and scared, staying in the cabin the whole time, and if you go all cookie, the power goes to her head and she kicks you off the ship. However, if you keep a balance between the two choices, you and she sail the seas together.
Form factor
This project was set up within an exhibition space, meant to be able to stand alone for a roaming crowd. For display purposes, I staged the game on my laptop and built a box around it to both prevent keyboard mishaps and to act as a placement table for the cookie and the lemon.
Description
In front of the display, there was a description that summarizes the reasoning for the project and the objective of the game. (Note: The exhibition was featuring works that were inspired by lemons.)
Process
Brainstorming
As mentioned above, the project was meant to be influenced by lemons. As a personal goal, I was pursuing gamification of the lemon. I began thinking about the practical uses of a lemon as a mode of sport, or as a time keeping device, as well as its capacitive properties. When I brought scurvy into the picture, I found a storyline that I was interested. Thus was the conception of mode and purpose.
Writing and Illustration
I wanted to create the feeling of an interactive children's book, with simple illustrations that were animated, as to take advantage of the digital medium. With only two weeks to complete the project, I also made a choice early on to make the story fairly linear.
The written portion of the story remained minimal so that the user could experience the story in the illustrations more than the text itself, which played more of a support role in detailing the story.
Construction
The game runs in an HTML document, and the choices are selected via 'l' and 'k' keypresses, as well as normal mouse selection. Taking advantage of a lemon's natural capacitive abilities, I plugged it into a touch capacitive arduino shield along with a cookie wrapped in foil. I programmed it so that the lemon would type an 'l', and the cookie would type a 'k'.
Concluding Thoughts
Next Steps
Given more time, I would have liked to create a more in-depth story with some better looking animations. I think that the concept of an interactive, animated children's book is strong, but there is more that could have been done to build connection between the game and the user.
What I Learned
The presence of a lemon and a cookie in the front of a screen draws users in. Using these objects as control mechanisms makes a 2D, digital space more interesting in a line-up, and then the content of the screen makes them stay. The question of how to bring that sort of interest in digital applications without the lure of touchable food comes to mind. Certainly a thing to think about for the future.
I recieved feedback during play-throughs that the ratio of lemon to cookie decisions could use adjustment in terms of how many choices it takes to change the outcome. In future iterations, I'd like to do more research into parenting techniques and push it more into an education tool for children about compromises and self-restraint. In that version of the game, there would be more choices involved and higher stakes for getting the perfect ending.
