RYVER CITY PARTY
Brief
Challenge 4 of the Apple Developer Academy required my team of 5 to create a game for an Apple platform of our choice as well as a storyboard, game design document, promotional video, and more.
Ryver City Party—a 4-player virtual party board game for tvOS.
Introducing
On a Detroit inspired map, four players compete from the perspective of their chosen characters, rolling dice and battling in trivia and a mash up of taboo and charades. When players roll, it’s a game of luck and strategy to see who wins the most Moto-bucks. The final winner earns their character a pair of “buff” glasses.
We chose tvOS because we wanted family and friends to enjoy a fun gaming environment on a big screen similarly to consoles.
My Role
Product Manager
Using Miro, I directed the ideation of our project and assigned tasks to the coders and designers based on their strengths and preferences. I steered the conversation of the product features and UVP and monitored the progress of project tasks, while keeping my team on track using backlogs and scrums to deliver a cohesive gaming app. See examples of my contributions below.
Game Design Document
As the project manager, I refined and documented the smaller details of our game like the rules, the mechanics, and the
Ideation
I was responsible for steering the ideation phase, constantly evaluating what ideas and features had payoff for users and were feasible with our timeline.
Kanban Boards
To ensure the team executed the steps needed for the final deliverable in the right order, I managed the Kanban boards for agile project management.
In the Research phase of our project, the co-manager and myself conducted trials using prototypes of the mini games designed within RCP to get user feedback and refine design.
As the Lead UX/UI Designer. I did the wire-framing, led the branding, created many of the in-game assets, designed the map and designed the user interface.
I also illustrated the storyboard and created the promotional video.
Lead UX/UI Designer
Style Guide
As Lead Designer, I took the initiative to draft assets for our game and brainstorm brand components like font and colors. With feedback from peers and fellow cohort members, I was able to finalize brand style, icons, and logos that fit the team’s vision.
Query Combat
Building on what the team collectively decided we wanted the core experience of our game to be, I crafted the experience and visual asset for Query Combat— a family feud-inspired trivia mini game.
We found that, while we can use iPhones as additional remotes, they would all function as the same controller. This meant they could be used asynchronously but not simultaneously as players could control other players remotes even out of turn. As a workaround I came up with the concept of buzzers to regulate players to one turn at a time. The player who hit their assigned buzzer gets to answer the question and all others must drop their remotes.
Mimics & Mystery
I also designed the and fine-tuned the rules and flow of Mimics & Mystery, the counterpart to Query Combat. Mimics & Mystery is a taboo and charade’s inspired guessing game where a detective uses their partner’s hints to guess keywords. While Mimics & Mystery is fairly simple in design and requires less code than Query Combat, the directions for users to follow made up for it in time and attention to detail. I was responsible for that as I designed the rules and wrote the user guide for playing the game properly.
Storyboard
As Lead designer, I analyzed our early game concept to build a storyboard that conveys the essence of our game’s experience.
Map and Hero Assets and Foliage
Using Procreate, Sketch, and Adobe Photoshop, I designed the map or board that the game takes place on as well as many of the visual assets. I designed the foliage from scratch and refined the 2D models created by another one of our designers so that they have 2.5D depth. This is how we sought to achieve the Detroit City feel in our game.
Samples
Promo Video
A demo of what we were able to code in Query Combat
Project FAQs
What was challenging about the project?There were many ideas we had as a team and as individuals. Considering that one of our coders had no coding experience, they were very intimidated by the scale of the project. My challenge was maintaining morale, pushing the team to do their best, and managing the different personalities.
What did you enjoy about the project?I enjoyed the theme of the project. As someone who was an avid gamer in youth, it inspired me to take a closer look at design decisions made in some of my favorite games and capture what made me love them so much.
What di you learn from this project?I learned about tools of product management, what goes into game development, and how to drive a team of various personalities to a finish line.