For a CTWR518 assignment from last week, here is my slideshow presentation on HanakoLand, a theme park based on the properties of Hanako Games.
For anyone unfamiliar with Hanako, they've developed a number of downloadable PC games, and a few console games as well. There's a chance you've heard of Cute Knight, Fatal Hearts, or Princess Debut (for the DS). They target teen and pre-teen girls, although I've had some fun with several of their games. The only one I'd really recommend, though, is Cute Knight, which is based on an interesting time-management mechanic rather than their usual branching narrative. You can download a demo of the game here.
A common theme in all of the Hanako games is a wide variety of possible endings. When the game is over, the player is given a short story the describes what happens to the character. In many ways, HanakoLand is a typical Disneyland-like theme park, with rides and activities based on the characters and locations that visitors know from the games. I thought that people would be able to intuitively understand the park on this level, but I also wanted to incorporate this idea of a variety of endings.
So, laid on top of the physical park is a massively multiplayer time-management role-playing game. Each park visitor plays a character, with a set of attributes and skills, and every thing they do in the park changes their statistics. Riding the scary roller-coaster, for example, increases a player's Courage attribute. Taking a ballroom dance class increases their Dancing skill. These statistics have an effect in several park activities, such as in Heileen's Adventure, a branching dark ride, like a nonlinear version of Pirates of the Caribbean. Depending on the combined statistics of everyone in each car, the car will take a different path through the collection of decorated and animatronic scenes.
When the visitors leave the park, they receive a print-out of a character destiny, in the Hanako style, based on their own or their group's statistics at the end of the day. When someone comes back to the park, they're likely to plan out their day so that they end up with different statistics and, hence, a different destiny.
That gives you an idea of what HanakoLand is all about, so hopefully the slides will make some sense. You can download them here. And I would encourage you to poke around Hanako Games as well, if only to keep up on the world of indie games for girls.