The Road of Trials has been one of the most involved parts of this course so far. Over the past six weeks, our team has worked through the process of designing, building, and refining a complete educational game experience based on Dante’s Inferno. Looking back on everything we’ve done, this phase really highlighted what it means to move from an idea into something playable—and then into something meaningful.
🧠 The Design Process (6-Week Journey)
Over the six-week period, our process evolved quite a bit as the project grew.
We started by establishing the core concept: a judgment-based game where players evaluate souls and assign them to the correct Circle of Hell. From there, we moved into structuring the experience—breaking the game into levels, defining learning goals, and outlining how each case would function.
As development continued, the focus shifted toward:
- Expanding scenarios into more narrative-driven cases
- Building the Twine structure across multiple levels
- Integrating everyone’s work into a single, cohesive experience
- Iterating based on feedback from peers and our instructor
Within the team, my primary focus was on designing and developing my assigned level. This included:
- Writing and expanding case scenarios
- Developing dialogue and character defenses
- Structuring player choices and outcomes
- Implementing the level in Twine
- Assisting with merging levels into the full game
- Helping refine scoring and reviewing other team members’ sections
As the project progressed, collaboration became a bigger part of the process. We moved from working individually to actively shaping each other’s work, which helped create a more unified experience overall.
🧩 Designing My Level
One of the biggest differences I experienced while designing my level was the shift from thinking in terms of questions to thinking in terms of scenarios.
Early on, it was easy to treat each case as a straightforward “right or wrong” decision. However, as I developed the level further, I focused more on:
- Adding narrative context
- Giving each soul a voice through their defense
- Creating situations where the answer wasn’t immediately obvious
This made the design process more complex, but also more engaging. It pushed me to think about how players interpret information, not just how they select an answer.
Another challenge was balancing difficulty. I experimented with increasing the number of answer choices and making cases more nuanced, which helped create a sense of progression—even if that progression wasn’t always immediately visible.
🔍 Reflection: What Worked (and What Didn’t)
What was successful:
- The core concept translated well into gameplay
- The narrative-driven cases made the experience more engaging
- Collaboration improved the overall quality of the game
- The final merged version felt like a cohesive product rather than separate parts
What was less successful:
- Narrative clarity took longer to establish than expected
- Player impact (why choices matter) wasn’t always clear in early versions
- Difficulty progression existed, but wasn’t always obvious to the player
- Some time was spent revisiting ideas that could have been defined earlier as a team
🔁 If I Could Start Over
If I were to start this project again, I would focus more on alignment early in the process.
Specifically, I would want the team to establish:
- A clear player role (Who is the player within the experience?)
- A defined feedback system (What do choices mean beyond right/wrong?)
- A shared vision for how narrative and mechanics work together
Having those elements locked in earlier would have helped reduce uncertainty later and made the design process more efficient.
📘 New Learning & Takeaways
One of the most valuable takeaways from this level was understanding how design evolves through iteration.
Even when the core system is strong, the experience can still feel incomplete without:
- Narrative context
- Clear player motivation
- Meaningful feedback
This level also reinforced the importance of:
- Designing for player interpretation, not just correctness
- Balancing structure with creativity
- Collaborating and adapting within a team environment
As an individual designer, I found that I became more comfortable working in that space between structure and storytelling—where learning objectives and player experience intersect.
🚀 Final Thoughts
The Road of Trials felt less like a straight path and more like an ongoing refinement process. Each step forward revealed something new that needed adjustment, but that’s also what made the experience valuable.
At this stage, the project feels like it has a strong foundation. What remains is not rebuilding, but refining—making sure that the narrative, mechanics, and player experience all align into something cohesive and impactful.
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