Julien Lebon
Game designer
PROJECT – POSITION
Game / Serious Game – Game designer
DATE AND DURATION
2018 – 7 months
PUBLISHER
DEVELOPERS
DESCRIPTION
Smokitten is a serious game / mobile app made to help smokers quit and make people aware of the dangers of tobacco.
Smokitten Park : on this second version, for kids, we give information about risks to keep children safe from the tisks of tobacco.
The player will discover minigames that can be either relaxing or very engaging.
The game was released on September 2018 for iOS and Android.
MISSIONS
Game design : game design and game concept
One of my biggest missions on Smokitten was to make the game more fun by testing existing prototypes and modifying early design documents to improve the minigames.
The boxing minigame prototype wasn’t working. So I suggested a new concept based on what I think boxing is : a game of timing during which you have to do the right moves at the right time. I was inspired by Taiko / Konga games (like Donkey Konga) to create a “konga boxing” minigame in which our player has to hit the right part of the screen iat the right time. And then add a second phase in which the player can mash on the screen to make our cat goes berserk and destroy that poor punching-ball !
Game design : UI and mockups
Creating UI for Smokitten was a challenge. All of the minigames UI had to be similar since every minigames had the same purpose : be fun, have a small dose of challenge and let the player earn some in-game currency. But every minigames have different gameplay, different camera and objectives. So it was important to see the UI has a system that could work on every game but without losing focus on every game particularities and help the player not to lose track when switching from one minigame to another. I used Adobe Animate to do this job.
Game design : Improve in-game economy
There were different requirements to fulfill in Smokitten :
- games had to have the same overall difficulty
- no game must bring more currency than another since we want to let the player to chose his favorite activity, not forcing him to play the most lucrative one
- we must reward committed players and make them earn currency faster than casual gamers but not to fast so they can’t buy every item after only a few days and lose interest
Game design : Feedback and new features
One of my missions was to test the early alpha version of the game to put as many feedback as possible. I also suggested and described new features.
Game/level design : set minigames cameras
Game/level/system design : Simplify in-game economy
We improved in-game economy to make it easier to understand for the player and easier to modify for the development team. We also had to keep in-mind that our economy had to work for both hardcore and casual players.
Game design : Game design document
Game design : Tutorials
A good challenge since I had to introduce minigames with as little screens as possible.
Projet Management : monthly meetings with partners
Development : Unity minigame prototypes
Sound design : Create sounds to improve feedback and reward the player
I worked on the soundlist and created some fun sounds to reward the player while staying faithful to game’s universe. Players are here to have fun and forget about smoking, not reading boring texts. Tutorials had to be short, comprehensive, and engaging.