The alpha build of the coping card deck builder for Menphys is finally finished. The game’s now fully playable – six story cards are part of the build with progressive difficulty, each with interactive AR characters, plus a decent set of coping cards to use.

Getting everything working is one thing, but actually finishing it is another. This last stretch has been full of bug fixes, UI tweaks, and endless little adjustments and game balancing. It’s always the small stuff that takes the most time.

We had our first playtest this week with children aged 5 to 18, including those with autism, visual impairments, Down’s syndrome, and other learning difficulties, as well as children without additional needs. The response was brilliant – most were really engaged with the AR features and loved interacting with the characters. Quite a few wanted to keep playing even after the session finished, which was great to see.

There’s still some work to do on helping everyone fully grasp the concepts. I suspect that’s more about my instructions and the tutorials than the game itself, so I’m hoping there’s a bit of passive learning happening as they play. Either way, there’s plenty to take from this first round of testing and a lot to work with for the next phase of development.

Next up, it’s more playtesting and further development. I’m also working on a journal article with De Montfort University, exploring some of the research questions around this approach to learning and how AR is being used and engaged with. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of both the data and the feedback.