The Game of Life
A collection of fun and addictive mini-games for HSBC, produced forTAK! design.
goals
To promote the importance of not just pensions, but actual quality of life in our later years, Tak approached us with a concept of mini-games to showcase this in a fun light.
process
We were lucky to be in there right at the beginning. The pitch process had already started when GYW were asked to put forward ideas for "Wario ware" style games, 14 in total. These ideas were submitted, and the job was won by Tak ( Just as well, or this case study would be ending right about now ).
Initial look and feel image for the unused game "Money Drop"
Soon after the Game Design Docs were submitted it became apparent that the client wanted to go with less games, but much bigger in terms of scope. This entailed more brainstorming and another round of design doc writing, but these revised ideas were approved quickly.
solution
The core design concept was retained from the original 14 game design, we weren't in a position to throw working ideas away due to an agressive time frame in which to produce a large amount of interactive content.
A front end would be in place ( An important aspect was that it had to support translatable text, which we pulled in from an xml file ) which would allow the player to select which game to play. This controller would also take care of all the loading and between level aspects, which was vital in terms of workflow due to the fact that two developers were working on the contents, so the games had to be able to be tested outside of the front end enviroment.
By this approach we avoided both a lot of redundancy and meant that the first game was actually completed at the same time the front end was ready for beta testing.
Holding the baby
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Part of the initial inspiration for the project was "Feel the Magic" for the Nintendo DS, so this game become our homage to the split screen style of play ( Also a nod of the hat to 24 ).
Out of all the games, this had the most difficult development time. As it's an original concept ( We likened it to rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time ) we had no benchmark to go against in terms of gameplay. On paper it felt like it was a good game, and we went with our gut instincts.
The core engine was turned around very quickly, and then extra time was devoted to ensuring the gameplay was of a high standard. Due to it's original nature, this entailed a lot of play testing and tweaking, with a lot of valuable feedback from Tak.
Possibly the most difficult game of the whole project, but we feel the end results have a good pay off for the time invested in it. |
Original design concept for the baby waking animation
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Souper Bowl
Aside from having a terrible pun of a title, this game was based on the arcade classic "Tapper". Because this game is against the clock, we didn't add the full depth of the original game, which had the added side effect of keeping it simple, which proved to be ideal when targetting such a large demographic, which was core to the brief for The Game of Life.
First draft mock-up, with the Feel The Magic inspiration heavily
in there, and the 70's inspired controller colour scheme.
High Jinx
A nice simple game, in the style of the Yeti sports series. We felt it was always at the very heart of the project that everyone coming to it would like at least one game, so we wanted to add as many game styles as possible to allow that.
So from the comparative complexity of both Souper Bowl and Holding The Baby, we felt this would drop in nicely and work well as a coffee break game on it's own.
Gift Shop
Again, another total change in direction. A cute, bright and colourful version of the classic logic game "Mastermind".
The Day of the Triffids
Possibly our least favourite title of all the games ( After coming up with over 20 concepts, inspiration left us on this name ), but the gameplay more than makes up for it. Heavily inspired by both "Asteroids" and "Hover Bover", this was just fast paced arcade fun.
The game was actually made last so we could just let our hair down a bit and get back to our arcade gaming roots.
result
At the time of writing the game is still awaiting launch on the clients site, but it is hosted by Tak hereplay
View the development notes in the blog
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