Created by Beau Gonzalez, Owen Rohm, Joe Bakas for ID 3052 in Spring of 2021
THE GAME
C.R.A.B. is a new mark in game territory. The game is a physical embodied experience that is meant to provoke deeper thought in it's players. Players will be divided into teams: the tree-cutters, the fisherman and the craftsmen. They will then play mini-games unique to each team to earn items that can be traded at the lighthouse for points for their team. When a round ends however...the crabs are unleashed. The space is filled with robotic crabs that will steal points from the teams and will make the mini-games harder every time that they successfully invade.
The twist to C.R.A.B. is that it is a cooperative game masked as a competitive game. Players earn points but these have no real meaning. The items that each team earns through their game actually combine together to make crab traps, if every station has a crab trap, the invasion of crabs is stopped the next round and players win the game. If players continue to feud though, all teams after enough invasions will lose the game.
By creating a game that has fun surface gameplay with a deeper meaning, C.R.A.B. hopes to instill thought and promote empathy outside of the game space. Much like an escape room is facilitated, C.R.A.B. would have a dedicated space and a person/pirate to create immersion and guide players who may be having a hard time or feel lost.
RESEARCH
Our group originally diverged looking at all different aspects and types of games. Exploring accessibility, existing embodied games, game feel, immersion, etc. Coming together again we were interested in making a meaningful game and had research to support it. Games create a heightened sense of empathy for players since they are inhabiting the game and have agency and take action themselves. There are already a number of serious games, though mostly digital, it proved that they could not only be fun but also there was a space in the market for them.
IDEATION
With the goal of creating an embodied game that has deeper meaning, all three of us dispersed to come up with concepts of our own. We came up with great ideas that all were very different from the last. Getting friends to play them and playing them ourselves we realized that they were not as great as we thought. Finding that we had a lot of room to grow we began tweaking with each iteration we played.
INITIAL CONCEPT
After many iterations we took the most enjoyable gameplay components of each station and created a cohesive ancestor to C.R.A.B.. We tested with players in two ways, there were group tests to test the initial systems of gameplay and individual tests to see how the mini-games work.
STATIONS
The Tree - The tree station has wood cutters play a whack-a-mole game. With targets all over the tree, the players objective is to hit each target with the axe when they light up and get a piece of wood. As the round progresses the targets light up for shorter periods to add difficulty.
The Dock - At the dock players will spear plastic fish that move erratically around on an air hockey table to earn points. These fish will dwindle and speed up their movements as the round continues increasing difficulty.
The Workshop - In the workshop, players will use the fish of the dock and the wood of the tree to build crab traps. Though given a small amount of the supplies, players will quickly run out and need to cooperate with other teams in order to get more supplies
