The Pazzi Conspiracy: An Educational Video Game

Devlog

• Install Instructions
  October 08, 2021 by Haley Price

  Install Instructions Mac Users ---------------------------------------- Download the Mac build app at the bottom of this page. If necessary, follow the prompt to verify the developer and open the app... Continue reading
• Video Exegesis
  May 13, 2021 by Haley Price

  In this video, Haley Price breaks down the story and design elements of her honors thesis, The Pazzi Conspiracy: An Educational Video game. She records this video exegesis with the help of her second... Continue reading
• Citations
  May 07, 2021 by Haley Price

  Sound Effects: “turnPage” by partheeban on Freesound.com Additional typewriter sound effects from zapsplat.com Music: Below is the list of recordings I used from John Sayles , plus their original... Continue reading
• Writing a Teaching Guide II
  May 06, 2021 by Haley Price

  I have just completed the first draft of the Teaching Guide. Since this game is meant as an educational tool, I have written a teaching guide to help instructors integrate it into their classrooms. Th... Continue reading
• Writing a Teaching Guide
  May 06, 2021 by Haley Price

  As this game is designed to teach students about Medici patronage and conspiracy in the Italian renaissance, I need to make it easy for instructors to integrate the game into their classroom. That is... Continue reading
• Level 2: Fixed!
  May 02, 2021 by Haley Price

  When I released Beta 1.0, Level 2 wasn't fully playable. The mini game "Find the Medici" was completely omitted because it was just too technical to get done in time. But now it's ready! The main poin... Continue reading

  
• Visual Overhaul
  May 02, 2021 by Haley Price

  While Beta testing has been underway, I have been making major updates to the game from behind the scenes. The game has had a pretty big visual overhaul this week, which makes it feel 10x better to pl... Continue reading

  
• Beta Testing Feedback I
  April 24, 2021 by Haley Price

  Beta testing has been open for a few days now. Only a handful of people have filled out the feedback form so far, but I've gotten a lot of useful feedback already. I also got to watch two people play... Continue reading
• Beta Launch
  April 24, 2021 by Haley Price

  On April 20th, I released the Beta build of The Pazzi Conspiracy: An Educational Video game. Now people can play the game and fill out a feedback form to help me improve the user experience. It is har... Continue reading
• UI: Dialogue
  April 11, 2021 by Haley Price

  The most important piece of UI for tis game is, of course, the dialogue. It is where the player will spend the most time because nearly all of the gameplay is driven by its narrative. I am still toyin... Continue reading

  
• UI: Quest Log and Alerts
  April 11, 2021 by Haley Price

  In this post, I'm going to talk about both the UI of the game's Quest components and how they facilitate the game's narrative. As I said in my post about the overall theming of the UI , The Quest Log... Continue reading

  
• UI: Main Menu and HUD
  April 11, 2021 by Haley Price

  The main menu of the game right now is very simple. I just used some of the medieval assets from other parts of the game to make it match in theming, but it won't stay the way it is for long. I just n... Continue reading

  
• UI: Overall Theming
  April 11, 2021 by Haley Price

  For the UI, I wanted everything to be very simple and feel medieval. The medieval RPG genre of video games is so well-established that adopting that style of UI here makes my job as a designer much ea... Continue reading

  
• UI: Map
  April 11, 2021 by Haley Price

  The player's Map of Florence is one of the first things I designed for this project in Unity. I found a really cool 1493 map of the city that fit with the game's art direction, and it showed all the k... Continue reading

  
• Alpha Launch
  April 04, 2021 by Haley Price

  The first (technically) fully playable version of The Pazzi Conspiracy is now available for download! Over the past few weeks, I have created 25 scenes to hold the five levels I wrote in Twine. I wrot... Continue reading
• Functionality: Setting Up
  March 30, 2021 by Haley Price

  I'm working on the game's basic functionality at the moment. It won't be pretty for a long time, but I need to set up every scene so that the plot is fully playable in Unity, at least in terms of clic... Continue reading

  
• Narrative: From Twine to Unity
  March 27, 2021 by Haley Price

  This will just be a quick blog post to discuss my switch between development programs. I did the first draft of each level's story in Twine, but the final game will be made in Unity. Twine is great be... Continue reading

  
• Narrative: Editing
  March 27, 2021 by Haley Price

  Over the past few weeks I have met twice with my second reader, renaissance expert and historian Dr. Frazier. She played through levels 1-4 and gave me substantive feedback that I can use to make edit... Continue reading
• Narrative: Level 5
  March 26, 2021 by Haley Price

  Over Spring Break, I was able to finish the first draft for Level 5, which centers directly on the Pazzi Conspiracy. In some way this was the easiest chapter to write. After writing four levels, I had... Continue reading
• Narrative: How I Wrote the First Draft
  March 08, 2021 by Haley Price

  My goal for February was to finish a rough draft of the game's narrative in Twine. I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't complete this goal, but the work I did was still significant, especially co... Continue reading
• A Note on Mental Health
  March 08, 2021 by Haley Price

  As these blog posts are eventually meant to be adapted into an exegesis, I think it's only right to acknowledge and reflect on the biggest challenge I am facing with this project. I've struggled with... Continue reading
• Playtesting: Round One
  March 04, 2021 by Haley Price

  I'd like to reflect briefly on the playtesting I've done so far and what I plan to do moving forward. So far, I have been able to playtest with 6 people in person while I have written Levels 1-4. In g... Continue reading

  
• Creating Game Art
  February 08, 2021 by Haley Price

  Over winter break I worked on the art for the game. In my efforts to stay historically accurate, I only used art from contemporaries of Lorenzo de' Medici, and I mainly focused on Florentine artists... Continue reading

  
• Successes and Challenges
  November 21, 2020 by Haley Price

  Despite what seems to me a lack of suitable evidence, I have been working on and thinking about my thesis a lot this week. In this post I'd like to talk about what I have been doing. Successes for thi... Continue reading
• Conspiracy Line II
  November 14, 2020 by Haley Price

  This dev log on the Conspiracy Line is largely a reorganizing of the same ideas I had in the previous one. I realized that it would be most effective to plot out what one key point I wanted the playe... Continue reading

  
• Patronage of Art I
  November 12, 2020 by Haley Price

  I had wanted to keep working on the Conspiracy Line this week, but I had to put that on hold briefly. I had forgotten that I was supposed to present part of my thesis in my Humanities Thesis class thi... Continue reading
• Conspiracy Line I
  November 07, 2020 by Haley Price

  One of the things my advisor, Dr. Clulow, and I talked about last week was the importance of having two storylines running through the game that each serve a different purpose. There is the surface l... Continue reading

  
• The Search for Art II
  October 28, 2020 by Haley Price

  Even with access to the complete works of the main artists patronized by Lorenzo de' Medici, I knew I didn't have enough figures to flesh out the world of the game. One major limitation of early Renai... Continue reading

  
• The Search for Art and Sound
  October 26, 2020 by Haley Price

  In this post, I will talk about gathering historical images and music to use in the game's design. Above is a selection of the images I have downloaded as inspiration for the game art. You can scroll... Continue reading

  
• Structural Changes II: Redefining Goals
  October 24, 2020 by Haley Price

  Each time I meet with my thesis advisor(s), we continue narrowing down and specifying the goals of my game project. We started with a game that teaches lots of different things about the Renaissance t... Continue reading

  
• Experiments with Story
  October 14, 2020 by Haley Price

  Over the past few weeks I have begun to experiment with making functional and fully playable branching narratives. I used Twine to create a first draft. This was supposed to be an extremely rough draf... Continue reading
• Structural Changes
  September 29, 2020 by Haley Price

  Structural Changes: Making the Game Classroom-Friendly I recently made a large structural change to the game after talking with my advisor, Dr. Clulow, about what kind of game professors would be mos... Continue reading
• Getting Started: Design Document and Sample Scene
  September 23, 2020 by Haley Price

  Initial thoughts: How has this semester been going? Although I have been planning and researching this project for much of college, this school year is when I have time set aside specifically to wor... Continue reading