Title menu featuring the game’s title, “Restoring Harmony”, the game’s character logo (an Earth-like planet holding a baton while smiling), and buttons aligned vertically with the Play button on top (larger with a distinct icon), then the Settings and Credits buttons. The Quit button is missing from this image as the screenshot was taken from the web version.
Restoring Harmony was made during Indie Cade’s 2024 Climate Jam. Myself and most other participants joined the jam as interns, a role we each applied to. The theme of the jam was known from the very beginning. IndieCade wanted us to create a game focused on climate change and, more specifically, not lean to far to one side of the topic (doom and gloom or sunshine and rainbows). However, as long as a game was focused around environmentalism, it was accepted. My team decided to follow IndieCade’s prompt as close as possible.
I originally joined the internship and jam with the intention of using the work I did for the game within my final graduate thesis. My thesis (which can be viewed here), focused on the importance of inclusive design and accessibility within video games. I went into this project (jam) with the intention us using what I learned from my research paper to make an inclusive game, despite limited resources (i.e. time, experience, money, etc.).
The jam lasted about 5 weeks and was broken into multiple stages: Ideation, Prototype, Production, and Polish. I worked with a team of 8 including myself. The team consisted of: 3 programmers (one of which quit and was later replaced), 3 3D artists, myself as UX/UI Design, and one composer. I also took the role of Project Lead for this jam.
During the week of the production stage, we used this time to come up with a game idea and put together a pitch deck. Being within a team of 8, it was difficult to decide on a single idea. The team originally came together with the idea to make a game around building a floating city. While trying to flesh out that idea, new ideas and inspirations changed the game idea into a musical town building game (this was later refined). After we decided on this initial idea and submitting our pitch, our game concept was well received with many other jam participants expressing an interest.
The Production week did not go as smoothly as planned. Unfortunately, our two programmers were unavailable for most of it. Since it was again necessary to submit something this week, as per the internship agreement, I decided to make a UI prototype of the menu layout directly within Godot. At the end of the week, one of the programers quickly put together a display of how “good” actions (labeled as ‘good’) and “bad” actions (labeled as ‘bad’) changed the music. While this represented a key component of our game— now having a scene negatively affected by climate change/human activity with gloomy music playing change both visually and audibly by restoring the environment— the feedback was fairly negative for our submission as it left players feeling confused due to its unclear and vague presentation.
At this point, in order to ensure that we would be able to submit a well developed and finished product by the end, I brought on another programmer. This programmer, in addition to taking a leading role, helped me stay in the loop with the programming team and general progress, making group facilitation smoother.
3 user personas were made to represent potential players: a college student, a parent, and a professor. Details about their favorite games, pin points, goals, motivations, and a quote were included.
Navigation design layout for the game with connecting arrows to represent points of interaction (POI).
Initial low fidelity wireframes created both for myself to reference when it came time to implement designs, and also used as discussion points with groups members to ensure that we were all on the same page. Not all of the designs made during this sage made it to the final result.
Initial concept sketches of button designs, menu layout, and title logo.
Similarly to past work, I made all of the textured UI components within Figma and then exported the PNGs into Godot. It was necessary to make multiple buttons, menus, progress bars, a tutorial, and more. In addition to creating the UI graphics, I also was in charge of User Flow and UX Writing. I worked to make sure that upon booting up the game (via web or download), it was clear where the player should go. The ‘Play” button was much larger than the others and on a separate line as well to create this distinction.
Despite the limited time we had, I tried to have the settings menu be well thought out and inclusive, covering most of the basic suggestions of gameaccessibilityguidelines.com. This allowed players to remap keyboard controls, adjust various audio channels, change the display resolution, be able to toggle flashing animations, and more.
Settings menu with the various visual settings displayed. Accessibility was a theme during production and I hoped the settings menu showed this despite the limited time of the jam.
To again help with user flow, after pressing the “Play” button, it lead players to a level select screen with multiple level choices— tutorial, small, medium, and large. At the beginning the tutorial level is the only one that is playable, forcing players to learn the game before continuing (however players are able to exit out of the tutorial level at any time and unlock the other levels).
Level select menu on first load. Only the Tutorial level is highlighted and interactable to start.