Gua-Le-Ni, a biometrically tuned action-puzzle videogame!

Written by Contributor

November 20, 2011

 

 

“Gua-Le-Ni, or: The Horrendous Parade”, the first commercially-released casual video game whose development and tuning were guided by the analysis of its players’ psychophysiological responses, is about to be released for the Apple iPad.

Double Jungle and Stefano Gualeni announce that their first iPad videogame “Gua-Le-Ni, or: The Horrendous Parade” is a few days away from release.

 

 

The game, that was inspired both by the British philosopher, David Hume and by a playful Mexican book that allows recombination of animal parts, is the first commercially-released casual video game whose development and tuning were guided by the analysis of its players’ psychophysiological responses.

 

Starting from very early builds, The Academy for Digital Entertainment at NHTV Breda University of Applied Science (The Netherlands) assisted the Italian development team of Double Jungle in obtaining a detailed insight into the psychophysiological (or biometric) effects that their casual action puzzle video game had on its target audience. In particular, the experiments correlated stress levels and the contraction of facial muscles with in-game performance in order to establish whether ‘Gua-Le-Ni’ offered the cognitive challenge, the learning curve, the duration and the enjoyment the designers had in mind for their product.

For example, the cognitive stress related to different speeds within the game and to the relative complexity of the beasts in play was tested on early prototypes. Such analysis, carried out on a large sample of users in the intended target audience of “Gua-Le-Ni” (casual gamers between 20 and 40 years of age, especially females), not only helped the BD4CG team to fine-tune the game, but often led to drastic changes in its game design and graphical looks.

In a test occurring later in the development of “Gua-Le-Ni”, the cognitive stress involved in going through the tutorial was also scrutinized. The focus was trying to understand whether it provided with enough interaction and entertainment, whether our testers felt empowered and in control after having gone through it. Cognitive stress, performance stress and flow are just some of the parameters that have a bodily expression that we decided to monitor throughout the quick iteration of our pioneering puzzle game.

 

 

Besides for its technical and methodological innovation, “Gua-Le-Ni” also offers formal innovations. To begin with, it gives traditional ‘matching’ mechanics a new twist. “Gua-Le-Ni” asks the player to recognize combinatorial beasts and to reconstruct them by actively manipulating digital objects in three dimensions. This new take on a classic game mechanic is made possible by the unique interactive capabilities of the Apple iPad.

The second mechanic which is unique to “Gua-Le-Ni” is a reverse-matching mechanics which translates into the feeding the in-game beasts with different food types. This mechanic depends on the availability of food in the playing field and on the specific food preferences of each beast. Feeding the beasts with different food combinations items can make them faster, slower, longer, shorter, more complex or more valuable in terms of points.

 

 

Gua-Le-Ni will be available in the Apple App Store in November 28, 2011.

 

Websites:

http://www.gua-le-ni.com

http://www.doublejungle.com

Facebook Comments

0 Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Articles

Magicpunk MMO Action RPG Crystal of Atlan Officially Launches

Magicpunk MMO Action RPG Crystal of Atlan Officially Launches

Crystal of Atlan, the free-to-play MMO action RPG, is now officially available on iOS, Android, PC, and PlayStation 5! It has also been confirmed that it will be featured in the Summer Game Fest Live Showcase on June 6, where its first major update will be revealed....

Sega Launches Sonic the Hedgehog Racing Around the World Campaign

Sega Launches Sonic the Hedgehog Racing Around the World Campaign

SEGA is thrilled to announce that Racing Around The World will be the theme for Sonic the Hedgehog's 2025 global brand campaign. With a special focus on Sonic's speed and adventurous spirit, this year's campaign will provide a variety of events and experiences to...

Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake Set to Launch on Oct. 30

Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake Set to Launch on Oct. 30

To celebrate Dragon Quest Day, which marks the anniversary of the release of the original DRAGON QUEST game in Japan on May 27, 1986, SQUARE ENIX announced that DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake – the narrative continuation and ultimate conclusion of last year’s...