Project G.A.R.D.E.N.S.
Role
UI/UX Artist
Level Designer
Timeline
6 months
(Spring 2023)
Skills and Tools
Visual Design, Prototyping, Experience Design, Collaboration, Figma, GDevelop
Targeting the Imagine RIT Creative and Innovation Festival, my team at Scarlet Equinox and I created and self-published a chill, futuristic puzzle game where players are part of a revival space mission saving dying alien plant life.
How might we...
build community?
With an open-ended prompt, the team and I found the opportunity to create an immersive story in space, facilitating the collaboration of children, teens, their parents, and grandparents alike in solving a series of interactive puzzles starting one Saturday afternoon.
Finalized UI visual comps. Not all puzzle levels shown.
A Sense of Belonging
Through the concept of a collective space mission, we focused our creative energy to produce an immersive gaming experience online and at Imagine RIT.
Engaging Play
Our visually striking designs inspired by unusual plant species and future UI captivated our audience in addition to the challenging puzzle gameplay at hand.
Our Stats
500+
Playtesters
We had over 500 people come to our exhibit at Imagine RIT to play Project G.A.R.D.E.N.S.
350+
Views
Since game launch on April 29, 2023, our itch.io page has received over 350 views.
70
Downloads
Project G.A.R.D.E.N.S. has had 70 downloads onto Mac and Microsoft devices since launch.
My Role As The UI/UX Artist
As a team of only 3, we played to our strengths. I began by establishing the logic of our gameplay along with the visual feel of our puzzle levels. My task then became building out each level and assisting in their implementation.
Hannah UI/UX Artist, Level Designer
Emily Visual Artist, Motion Designer
Sebastian 3D Artist, Gameplay Designer
From Holograms to Solving Puzzles
We initially planned for Project G.A.R.D.E.N.S. to be an interactive hologram installation. When mapping out the full depth of user interactions, we decided a puzzle gameplay model would be a more rewarding and participatory experience with the story we wanted to tell.
Rapid Prototyping
Creating interaction maps like the one below helped me determine the behaviors of our game's interface, which I then tested in our initial UI prototypes in Figma.
This initial prototype demonstrates how our plant holograms would animate when receiving certain natural resource inputs triggered by the user interacting with the holograms through a controller or physical gestures.
After moving forward with a puzzle gameplay model I introduced the connection of natural resources in our game's interface. Though not perfect, this iteration allows the user to have a more measurable impact.
As our square grid design evolved into a hex grid, I saw an opportunity to incorporate more decision-making into our gameplay. This design change led to deciphering pre-determined paths through rotation as opposed to forming paths between resource elements.
Designing Our Interface
Emily and I worked tangentially to develop Project G.A.R.D.E.N.S.'s visual and UI style by workshopping our universal screen elements to simulate a laboratory diagnostic screen with vibrant notes from our plant designs.
Version 1
Version 3
Version 2
Version 4
Asset Prep With Styles and Components
With a more finalized visual style, I assembled a mini design system within Figma to efficiently build out the remaining screens of our user flow.
This decision also accelerated implementation as Sebastian was able to download the prepared screen components and styles straight from the design file.
Game Walkthrough
The first thing our players see is our introductory cut scene made by Emily, which utilizes motion graphics and voiceover to explain the game's mechanics and objectives.
A full gameplay walkthrough is coming soon. In the meantime, you can play Project G.A.R.D.E.N.S. here or contact Hannah hannahrbailin@gmail.com
Takeaways
Relying on our prior knowledge of the product space and our development limitations served us well in building initial interest for our demo release.
Though being more art-oriented wasn't a bad thing, we recognized more advanced back-end knowledge would give us the necessary headroom to make highly adaptable game art elements in-engine.
Next Steps
-
Create new, adaptable puzzle levels adjusting time limits to correspond to difficulty, with the possibility of auto-generation.
-
Increase ease of access for our players by researching alternate distribution platforms and developer verifications.
-
Grow our audience and playtest pool by attending indie showcases and festivals.