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Second Chance is a Live-Action Role-Playing Game (LARP) that was created to be a follow up to another LARP called The Prison. In class, we played a game of The Prison and during it those who got eliminated had nothing to do after the fact. Therefore we were tasked with a making a LARP that worked opposite a game of elimination and could deal with a steady increase in players.

Second Chance is a game where you are asked to take a pill that may or may not take your prior memory, leaving you only with your personality. You are then placed in a room with others and must gain trust to become a model citizen within the society. Those who were opportunists in the original game will have trouble finding favour in Second Chance and will create new dynamics between characters.

Check out the write up here: Second Chance LARP

Second Chance was created with Emma Burkeitt and Saffron Bolduc-Chiong.

In Second Year, I worked in a group with Siyun (Sisley) Hu, Yanzi (Cindy) Xin, and Yuan Ting (Stephy) Chang for our Inclusive Design class. We went through a series of iterations before our final iteration (Work Together).

At first we tried to make a game which people who were blind could play – so a sound based game. We went through a few iterations and versions of games to play but the main problem was that it was hard for us to tell if the game worked or not.

At this point we asked Steve Engels, a professor at the University of Toronto, who is also a game designer and has worked on Accessible Games before for help. He got us in contact with Daniel Zingaro, a colleague of Steve’s who is blind himself. They helped us tremendously throughout the process.

Our professor, Jorge Silva, gave us critical insight and said our design was not helping anyone. It was safe and would do what we designed it to but how was it changing anything? This got us thinking that what we were doing was trying to solve a problem as opposed to looking at the problem itself and offering a new way to look at it.

Our final iteration was Work Together which let a sighted and non-sighted person play simultaneously together to beat a level within a time limit. You can check out user reviews and suggestions of Work Together here.

The exercise of designing for the differently abled was in all honestly extremely stressful but very rewarding. I don’t think I would do it again any time soon by myself but I would like working on something like this with a group who has greater insight than me. Working on something like this helps you to expand your view of the world and try to think more out of the box when you are designing something.

Downloads:

Final Write-Up: MDP FINAL REPORT

Blind Pac-Man: PC / Mac

Cube Dodging: PC / Mac

Test Walls: PC / Mac

Work Together: PC / Mac