This project was a joint collaboration with a developer (Dominic Jacobs) to create a game that promotes the company's brand and expands on the characters digital reach
Method: Consultation, ideation, drawing, gameplay design, storyboarding, concept art, animator
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash
2008, 1 month
Concept Artist, UX Designer
How might we build a game that uses the character's unique universe and also bring in elements of the company's business; celebrating Japanese pop culture?
A one-to-one interview with the company owner and his staff allowed us to find out what they would like to have as a final outcome, but also how it would be used in store and online. They stated that a 2d side scroller is a format they would like to see as an outcome.
Quick interviews with customers who visited the company's London store provided insights on what products and games their were interested. But most importantly to discover the type of video game genres they enjoy to play in a short amount of time.
The game market has many types of games from side scrollers to puzzlers, which makes it a vary versatile space for creating new game ideas. It was important to see what games were on the market and to analyse the level of difficulty for creating them.
Sketches of the games concept and outlines of the gameplay were created to start imagining how the game would look and feel.
We wanted to shape the style of the game based on the character styles. Therefore, I created new concept pieces, which could be used as the foundation for future development of the game.
The concept outline was shared with the stakeholders to show the direction that we were taking, but most importantly to gain feedback on how we can develop the product to best suit their needs.
Sketches of the storyboard was created to provide a background story for the game, layouts for levels and enemy arrangements, which would later on help us with developing high-fi visuals in the next stages.
An animation demo of the game's story introduction was created to set the scene of the game. This was created in Adobe flash.
By combining the storyboard and animation demo the game was able to start development in terms of coding and high-fi illustrations.
With the demo of the game a small user test was conducted with a small set of users to gain feedback on the gameplay mechanics and style of the game
The feedback was quite mixed with positive gameplay ideas, but the game's difficulty was too high and a completed level of the game is needed. On the other hand the animated introduction was positively received.
We were able to deliver a demo preview of the game, which showed off its gameplay mechanics, visual style and story.
The demo stage and user feedback was shared with the client to show the users' impression of the game. The client was pleased with the develop and expressed that some changes should be made to fall inline with the company's brand and vision.
It was a great opportunity to work on a demo game, even if it didn't turn into a fully developed product. I was able to learn about the processes for how a game would be developed, how to solve problems during development and most importantly to work with a games developer.
This demo even helped the client think beyond his typical product ideas for his business and to think more about what the digital space has to offer. For my friend (developer) and I, we were able to use this demo to get game development work from the company Toymation, which we managed to develop and ship a game called 'Whack-a-Tobi.
