Physically Prototyping Physics for Play: Possibilities and Practicality
Jackson Froehlich, Britton Horn · 2024
Game designers commonly use paper prototyping to evaluate educational effectiveness, enjoyment, flow, and usability, while also reducing costs and exploring alternative implementations. However, creating a paper prototype that yields actionable feedback can be challenging due to the wide range of methods available, from low-fidelity sketches to high-fidelity mockups. Most paper prototypes are static and progress discretely, making it difficult to prototype physics-based games effectively, unless focusing on interfaces, narrative, or underlying systems. This paper details the creation of three prototypes of varying fidelity and metaphor for a physics-based educational game on concurrency and parallel programming. Each prototype undergoes playtesting to assess construction methods and their effectiveness in gathering player feedback.