Game description
My baby 2 (subtitled First Steps or My Baby Grew Up according to regions) is a follow-up to the successful My Baby Boy & Girl. The game mechanics remain the same : care for your baby. The game covers a greater period in the baby’s development, so this time around, you get to teach baby how to speak (and climb stairs, but that’s far less entertaining).
Apart from the baby’s new activities, the greatest news for this sequel are the platforms. The game is available both on the DS and the Wii. To interact, you either use the stylus and Wiimote directly on the baby, or you shake a virtual toy to catch the baby’s attention. Teaching baby how to walk and run requires a few different gestures, but the real reward comes when baby learns to dance!
My contribution
I wasn’t in the design team for this game, as I was finishing Planet Horse at the time (yeah, the same Planet Horse which would be released a year and a half later – go figure). However, once our horse was gold, the whole studio had to contribute to My Baby 2. It was decided I would write the test plan, as no one was quite sure how the game was supposed to behave at any one time, and my design experience was supposed to help :
- Test plan : Writing it involved unearthing a lot of design docs which lay forgotten in our svn repository. We later switched to Google Docs for the design documentation, which would have been a big help if done earlier.
- Testing : As it was our first game for the Wii, we needed to test it thoroughly. Plus we were finishing both versions at the same time, meaning our testers needed some help.