ProTax ver.0.2

After the first initial release, I realized something: the gameplay loop was too tedious. Constantly looking back and forth at the paper is too much hassle and gets boring real quickly, even with extra features like the 'Freelook' mode, which is much faster than focusing/defocusing on the screen constantly. Not to mention the fact that every input field was text-based, so the player had to manually write everything, from name, address, job, etc.

The quick solution would be to just move everything to digital. So instead of physical paper, the user would get the entries through email or some other software. But I didn’t want to choose this path because I wanted to keep the feeling of the 90's, where, while there was some digitalization, there were still analog solutions.

Instead, I started thinking about how I could reduce the friction until I found three approaches:

• Abstraction:
  I implemented way too many data fields that never got used in any meaningful way, like the taxpayer ID or the user ID. Is it realistic? Yes. But does it add anything to the gameplay? Not really. There was no real purpose for these entries. Since they are numeric values, the only thing I could do with them was set them to something like "TX-6666666," which is indeed spooky…
  I also abstracted some information. In the real world, you need to give the exact annual income, but I realized this is tedious, so now you only need to select a range instead.

• Simplify the data:
  This is still a work in progress, but I need to avoid complicated names like "Humphrey Andreassen" or addresses like "412 International Blvd." These should be as simple as possible. A good example in the current game is the burial place "Foresthill Community Cemetery," which adds nothing to the story, it’s just a random cemetery, but the user needs to type this unnecessary information.

• Move away from text-based inputs:
  This is the most important. In the new version, I moved away from keeping everything as an input field to a proper form structure. The player can now choose the job type via a dropdown menu, there’s a proper date picker, and instead of typing in the exact income amount, the player only needs to choose a range.

In the future, I need to rework the paper textures, as they currently give the player way too much information.

While the gameplay is a bit more polished, I'm still not sure if I'm going to continue working on it.