Mutazione -
UX design for videogames
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Mutazione was a seven years long project in cooperation with Playstation creating a narrative driven singeplayer game playing in a mutant swamp village.
The goal of the project was to create an engaging user and game experience and enhancing the narrative of the game through visual design.
As UX & Game Designer, I was responsible for Prototyping, Visual Design, and Testing.
Overview
Background
Die Gute Fabrik is a danish games company that gained international success with their game Sportsfriends and Johan Sebastian Joust.
Die gute Fabrik won the award for best Sound Design for Mutazione.
As part of the Design Team, I collaborated daily with game artists, game developers and sound designers. My main responsibilities included the UX and UI design across different elements within the game.
During my time at Die gute Fabrik I learned a variety of skills, some of the key achievements listed below:
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Creating Mockups and In-Game Design Prototypes of an encyclopaedia used to increase the gameplay experience including user testing and rapid prototyping methodologies
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Enabling narrative progression within the game through implementation of story elements, and wiring them with variables to create gates
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Implementing a garden system by developing the UX & UI to connect narrative elements with the gameplay and improve user flow
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Increasing the playability of the game and minimizing the bug rate through QA running internal and external play-tests
Garden UX & UI
The seven gardens were the main interaction points for players to plant seeds, water them, and harvest new seeds. Additionally, they play a crucial element in the progression of the game. Therefore, players needed to have an easy access to the garden and understand the usability within short time. A main focus hereby, was on using visual signifiers that show elements like habitat, mood, and plant type.
After the first implementation, we conducted user tests with a small number of external testers to gain user feedback on the usability of the gardens. We identified the most common pain point, being the garden navigation was to complex, and reiterated the design. This helped us to create a better user experience.
Some key takeaways from this project are:
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Test as early as possible. Our user tests gave as a lot of useful information that helped us identify pain points early and prevented the game from breaking.
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Focus on the end-user. At the end of the day, we had to make sure that the end-user will enjoy the game and has a pleasant game experience.
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Work in small iterations. Splitting the work into small cycles helped us focus on the critical issues, ideate on solutions, and implement the final product.
Takeaways
