Introduction:
I am combining my nature handcraft idea with Esi’s hair braiding idea, somehow the narrative background is heavily based on Esi’s idea. So I did more research in order to have a better understanding about hair braiding, (also craft games since I still include crafting elements in it) prevent risks, and make a better game.
Game reviews
1.Braid Spa Hair Salon
Genre: Hair salon simulation
Target audience: the age of 4 +
Platform: mobile
Difficulty: Casual/ non- challenging
Gameplay: Help customer to do hair salon and spa
Appeal:
1. Sparkling color palette that is visually appealing to children> matches their target audience.
2. Range of mechanics, not only hair styling, players will be asked to wash customer’s hair, moisturize their faces and put their makeup on > more mechanics, more fun
3. Free to play, I can able to place the hair accessories wherever I want to create costumers’ unique hair style
4. High positive interaction: Comments/voices like “Perfect!”, “Cool!” and “Wow!” will be occurred after players do a step, which is encouraging and make players like to continue with the game
What I not like: Not meeting player’s expectation. As they put “Braid” at the very beginning of the title, I thought players can simulates actual hair braiding (hold 3 strips of hair and cross towards each other), instead, players use a comb to form braids
2. Printnxy
Genre: Hair salon simulation
Target audience: the age of 4 +
Platform: Browser
Difficulty: A bit challenging compared to most hair salon game
Gameplay: Help customer to braid their hair
Appeal:
1. High quality visual: a very smooth high resolution 3D game
2. Unique style > high education purpose: There are many hair salon game in the market, they are all about washing hair dry it then decorate it, I seldom see hair salon game that highly focus on African braids, letting players learn what steps are required in African braiding .
3. The authenticness of African braids: an extend of my previous point, the game highly focus on the education of African braids and included a lot of African signature braiding elements like tiny rainbow hair ties, beads, extension and baby hair
What I do not like: Not user friendly/ wrong choice of platform, the control for pulling hair is difficult to be detected which took me a long time to finish a hair style. I think this problem will not happen if I play this game on mobile devices
My thoughts in general : I had tried to search hair braiding games online but turned out combing out braids I would expect there are 3 strips of hair as mechanic and I can cross them towards each other to form braids
3. Pottery Master
Genre: Pottery craft simulation
Target audience: the age of 4 +
Platform: Browser
Difficulty: Challenging, it requires patient
Gameplay: To do a pottery as similar as the shape requested
Appeal:
1. High quality visual: a very smooth high resolution 3D game
2. High education purpose: This game introduced detail process of pottery craft, from shaping the clay, wheel throwing, clay conditioning with sponge, ceramic it then dry. It let players learn battery is not just shaping, painting and baking.
3. Challenging : It is a challenging craft game and I found wheel throwing is the most difficult part, it is challenging and needs some time for players’ to get use to the skills which is fun to play
What I do not like: Not free to play, this game requires players to form a certain shape and will rate your work base on your similarly. There is a painting section that does not affect the score, but I will wish for more.
My thoughts: Even though our game focuses on hair braiding, handcrafts (paper cut) is also on elf our mini games, Sao I did so research about it. Artsy/ handcraft games are comparatively less common in the game market, I think it is an opportunity for us to show that handcraft is also a fun game genre.
Reflection on our game: African braids and a world with handcraft elements are really rare among the game market, I am passionate trying something new, I hope after learning the goods and cons of games from a user’s perspective, I could make a satisfying game :))