Personal Projects

Delightful Experiences - Game Design

Capturing and Creating Nostalgia

Nostalgia is one of the most powerful tools for evoking a positive response in users. As someone who likes to apply my design thinking to anything I tackle, I leaned into this when creating my yearly Halloween bash for my friends. The theme: Pokemon. The challenge: to re-create that wonder many of us had as kids when playing the game and evoke the same feeling in adults who knew nothing about it.

The process of design and development took about six months between props, minigames, and clever real-world recreations of in-game concepts. The key, however, was focusing on the question ‘what do you remember most from pokemon?’

For some, it was bonding with their team of cute critters. For others, it was particular places, like a big monster sleeping in the middle of a road or the creepy music that played in a particular town. It even included gameplay elements, such as identifying seemingly identical ghosts using a special item. And although we incorporated all these elements, the key to capturing our friends’ delight was in the game’s slogan: the excitement of catching ‘em all.

So we made a scavenger hunt. We let our partygoers solve game-themed riddles and see familiar friends, all as part of collecting the 60 types of pokemon we had hidden around our property. We expected maybe two people to finish finding them all over the course of the party, probably less because we got hit by freezing rain and half the activities were outside.

8 teams of 2+ people finished and earned their souvenir badges that night. Several teams had people who’d never played the game once in their lives. When I asked them about it afterward, it turned out they were seeking the same thing we’d heard from those who were enjoying the warm hum of nostalgia - the thrill of completing a challenging but cute collection.

Delight for Developers

Bringing a smile to a user’s face is important, but what about the people working on the project? Not long ago, I was in charge of game design for a short maker’s challenge where my team of friends and I, all newbies to practical game development, hoped to learn some new skills. We only had two weeks to complete our game from start to finish while also balancing our full-time jobs or schooling. The question of delight for once was more about us developers than our users: how could we choose a game to develop that was on-theme but also made us excited to work on it despite our wildly different game tastes?

In the end, a mindmap around the theme, pitch brainstorming exercise, and simple voting did the trick. What had been a difficult conversation about favorite genres became focused on one idea that got all of us excited to give it our best shot.

Although we didn’t release the game due to an unexpected illness slowing our progress, we did finish an internal alpha with mostly custom assets within two weeks.

That might not sound like much, but considering we were all new to almost every aspect of developing this game (Unity, 3D modeling and animation, sound design, level design, and game engine development), it’s a testament to the passion poured into this challenge. Choosing the right project and the delight that came from working on that project massively increased our ability to learn and produce work.

Breaking New Ground

Nothing is more exciting than designing in unexplored territory. With XR slowly becoming more affordable, there is a whole field ripe for creative thinking that most designers have never considered. Right now, much of XR is focused on how to build real world accessibility, develop interpersonal connection through virtual spaces, or make you feel like you’re in your favorite video games. However, my experience with XR has led me to believe there are more opportunities beyond existing simulations.

In the effort of exploring ideas of companionship and safety within a virtual space for those who could benefit from an escape, I played with designing an ever-popular staple: an interactive pet. I wanted to explore a multitude of concepts to evoke that delightful feeling of closeness. Some questions I had included what level of interactivity and realism was needed to bond with a virtual creature, what kind of motion was non-disruptive to the feeling of immersion, and whether it was possible to incorporate challenge while avoiding the intense fight-or-flight response that can happen with combat-simulation games.

This side project ended up being deeply illuminating about the challenges of XR development and the power of even simple interactions in building connection between user and game. The technical challenges limited the ultimate scope of this project, but I and our testers all built fond memories of playing fetch with the baby dragon I built and animated.