Puzzle Sculpt is a captivating mixed reality, single-player puzzle game that transforms your home into a creative canvas. In this immersive experience, you'll sculpt unique items and solve numerical clues to unlock an array of exquisite decorations. Then, seamlessly integrate these ornamental pieces into your real-world space as Augments, bringing your living environment to life with artistic flair.
Concept Art and Key Visuals
Goals for Puzzle Sculpt
Cozy & Comfort
The joy and charm of the experience are central to its design. Every design decision is guided by the goal of creating delightful moments, often leading players to experience an 'aha' moment of discovery and wonder.
Player Fantasy
This game is meant to be played as a way to relax and unwind on the couch, we want to cater towards that experience.
MR Game with Wide Appeal
The target audience of this game is quite wide, with no defined age group or gender but rather people who tend to gravitate towards logic based puzzle games.
Design Pillars
Keep it Simple
Since our game targets a wide age range and varying levels of cognitive comprehension, it is essential to ensure that the concepts we introduce are easily understood by all players. Maintaining simplicity and clarity in the user experience is a key guiding principle in our design process.
Impactful Prority
Our game can become quite dynamic, with many elements occurring simultaneously. To help players digest important information effectively, we employ a visual hierarchy to prioritize and communicate critical information while placing less essential details at a lower priority. This strategic approach ensures players focus on what matters most to the experience.
Cozy and Accessible
Evaluating if the game feels cozy is a question we asked ourselves often. This is also balanced with the need for the game to be universally accessible to all types of players. Does the colour palette invoke feelings of warmth and relaxation while also being easy to read? Does the movement of the VFX spark delight without too many flashing colours?
UI/UX Journey
Addressing Challenges - Keep it Simple
The game is logic and numerical based, let’s ensure it is easy to understand
- We streamlined the tab bar by removing unnecessary information that cluttered the screen, keeping only essential elements
- We also used specific wording on buttons to clearly communicate their functions, such as 'Delete Save File' instead of just 'Delete.'
- By incorporating familiar UI elements like toggle bars, we helped players easily understand which mode they are in.
- Originally the player was meant to select between one of three modes, the actions were further simplified and help more significant context in the game
- We utilize colors and icons to enhance button and action recognition, such as using red for destructive actions and an 'x' icon to indicate the button's function before the player even reads the text.
Addressing Challenges - Impactful Priority
How can we ensure the player gets the information they need without overwhelming them?
- All priority text is placed on a solid background
- Using contrasting text size to get players the information they need (deco objects out of storage)
- A glowing prompt animation in the FTUE to show players where to click next
- Many manus look similar, the use of a title bar lets player immediately know what screen they're on
- Correlating information within the UI are placed together such as the pips for the number of slides in the tutorial and the navigational arrows
Addressing Challenges - Cozy and Accessible
This is a cozy puzzle game, does our gameplay and UI invoke that feeling while also being accessible?
- Colour palettes are kept simple and subtle to ensure any combination would be easy on the eyes
- The movements needed for the player to enjoy the game and kept subtle with the UI and interactions not being too far away from one another
- To simplify the game and not overwhelm the player with options, we opted to not have accessibility controls and instead make the whole experience already accessible whenever possible (colour, gesture, visual, audio)
- There was a strong push for the completion animations to feel charming and fun without being too overwhelming