The main menu mockup we created. In the final version the clouds, the boat, the water, and the crates are all animated.
During my studies in the digital art program at George Mason University, I also took a minor in game design with an emphasis on mobile development. I received a grant for a mobile project that was focused on developing an anti-underage drinking application for educational purposes. The resulting prototype was developed under the moniker “Grab the Goodies” as the working title.
One of our main objectives, aside from making the game enjoyable, was to make it strongly identifiable for kids. To that end, we decided we needed an iconic character that could be the face of the product. We went through several design phases, as pictured below, and arrived at the style that best reflected the teams’ direction.
The following are links to the client’s website and our project lead’s website, which provide a more detailed explanation about the game:
Rob Homewood (Project Lead)- This link is a video of the earliest alpha prototype we put out showing the basic framework of the game.
http://gamedevmojo.com/grab-the-goodies/
Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility (The Century Council)- This link goes to the grant’s sponsors who designated the objectives for the project.
Ollie
The main character I developed was Ollie the octopus, who would throw his tentacles out to grab objects in the game world. His tentacles are used to grab “good” items; i.e. healthy things like fruit, awards for good grades, etc. He can also grab “bad” objects such as leaky oil drums, jail birds, etc. The bad items would make Ollie sick, and after three “bad” grabs, a question screen would pop up asking kids tough questions about drinking. In the beginning there is no way the children will know this information, and knowing this, we created a help button with multiple recordings of a child shouting “Mom!” and “Dad!”. There were about 50 permutations of that recording, which led the kids to press the help button a lot during play testing. The idea in the long-term was to encourage interaction between children and their parents/guardians, by getting the adults to answer the questions for the children. That mechanic is ultimately trying to achieve an “AHA!” moment, where the parent gets something wrong and the child is able to correct them with knowledge acquired from playing the game repeatedly.
In the opening of the game, there is a cinematic to introduce the player to the game-space. These are stills from the cinematic.
The score screen pop-up that would show at the end of a round of play.
The icon as it would appear in use on the app store or base menu of the mobile device.
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