Mobile Game

Palooza

Overview

Palooza is focused on helping new college students lead a more whole and balanced life by assisting them in discovering a deeper connection with new acquaintances to help encourage social interactions and spark new friendships.

Skills: App design, Market Analysis, Character Design, 3D Environment Design, Networking

Tools: Figma, Unity, Blender

Platform: iOS

Final Product Video

Background

For college students who are first arriving at a new environment, there are some uncertainty and anxious for people to get to know each other pretty well.

Through party games, they brings people strangers can become friends, and friends can build lifelong memories together.

As designers, could we structure these games to build an even deeper, lasting trust between different types of players, even after the experience is over for new college students?

Different Games on the market

Our team played a few games together to get to know each other. They all work significantly since our team was just formed and we did not know each other before. After playing them, we found commonalities between different people and made friends.

Above all of the games, we suggest “We’re not really strangers” work the most effectively and we all felt comfortable playing it. It gave the most inspirations to us.

Market Analysis

Number of players: 2 to 6 players

Props: May need to use pencils drop down notes

Visuals: No visual aspects involved

Inclusiveness: May be asked unwanted questions

Level-up: Players get to know each other with level up questions

Personal: The questions are all personal

Number

Inclusiveness

Level-up

Personal

Props

Visuals

We’re Not Really Strangers

Our Game Setting

Number of players: 4 to 20 players

Props: No other props needed

Visuals: No visual aspects involved

Inclusiveness: May be asked unwanted questions

Level-up: Players describe these first impressions using the Special Idea Cards provided

Personal: The questions are all personal

Number

Inclusiveness

Level-up

Personal

Props

Visuals

First Impressions

Multiplayer game with a number of player over 3

Providing a safe environment sharing personal questions

Having level-up questions for players get to know each other better

Key Features

Choose and Guess

Memorize

Push the item back together

Player A

Player B

Player C

Player B

Player C

Question 1: What do you think is Player B’s favorite ice cream flavor?

Vanilla

Strawberry

Chocolate

Coffee

Player B needs to choose the answer and other players guess

Other players memorize what Player B chose

Finally, all players collaborate and push the item back to the correct player’s home.

Totally, we have three levels and each level of questions is different.

Level one questions are very simple and basic ones.
Level two questions are aimed to seek for a closer understanding about each other.
The last level questions are aimed to form a deeper connection.

The reason for having different levels of questions is having a level up understanding of each other and the players are willing to open their heart little by little.

All are timed

Although we confirmed our major game structure, we still need to figure out the key features in the game. We played several fun activities and looked for patterns about why they are interested for people to play. Finally, we designed three features down below.

User Flow

Start

End

Enter names

Watch tutorial

Question #1

Loop process

Level #1 ends

Level #2,3,4 loop

Push items to the correct player

Question #2,3,4

Reveal the answer

Level #1

One player choose

Rest players guess

Rest players memorize

The research theory behind setting of players choose and guess for each other

Dual-Process theories of Social Cognition

The premise underlying these theories is that there are two basic modes of cognition System 1 (“Fast”) and System 2(“Slow”) that correspond to different ways of processing information and controlled by evolutionary order (System 1) and newer (System 2) parts of the brain.

System 1

System 2

Fast

Unconscious

Automatic

Everyday Decisions

Error Prone

Slow

Conscious

Effortful

Complex Decisions

Reliable

Dual-Process Model of Impression Formation

2 processes involved in forming impression of others

Categorization

Individuation

Consciously and effort-fully obtains, processes, and sums unique, “individuating” information about a person

Automatically uses information and evaluations based on apparent (e.g. gender, race, age, profession, physical appearance)

In our game, players trigger system 1 thinking when they are guessing at level 1 because they don’t know each other. When the answers are revealed and they did not guess it right, they may realize the thinking of categorization is not correct. Thus, they trigger system 2 thinking. Players start to learn people in a conscious way in level 2 and level 3.

Question Items Art

Character Art

We used youthful colors to evoke GenZ’s shared memory considering our target audience are current college students.

Cute & Naughty

More Y2K

Final

3D Environment Art

Map Design

The environment we want to bring to our players is an amusement park on their desk. It looks like on their study desk, there are a lot of fun fantasy playing elements.

Level 1:

Simple and Straightforward

Easy to pass

Level 2:

Add obstacles

Increase difficulty

Level 3:

Greater difficulty

Make the players collaborate and communicate

First Draft Wireframes

Second Draft Wireframes

Suggestions of question design from our consultant -- Professor Geoff Kaufman at CMU HCII Department

Feedbacks & Adjustments:

Redesign the wireframes to the horizontal holding way

The draft of wireframes are vertically designed. After our playtests, some players were saying they were surprised by the herding part and they thought if we could design the whole game the same way for players to hold their phones. It would be easier because they will not have to change it sometimes.

Design the game with a more game-like interfaces

Some players didn’t realize it is a game. They thought it worked as an application to answer questions.

Change the timer by redesigning it differently for each level of questions

Now, we set the timer for players guessing is 15s for each level. However, during our halves presentation, a few professors were asking will we put people in an environment that always make them trigger system 1 thinking.

To solve this, we redesign the timer by level 1 guessing has 15s seconds, level 2 has 25s, and level 3 has 35s. With level up questions, people need more time to consider. And they will have to trigger system 2 thinking because they can not move forward.

Be aware of the wording of questions that may affect the players’ choices

Now, we have a question asking, “What is your current mood?”. Professor Kaufman suggests when the players are playing this game and other players are waiting for his/her choice, their current mood may skewed toward positive .

To solve this, we change the question by asking “What is your mood at the beginning of the day?”. That is an example of what we may change as being smart to not influence players’ choices.