Initial Comps

The next step from the sketches that Mike and I did were to translate them into simulated screenshots using existing game assets.  This would allow us to get a very clear sense of how elements would look and be arranged on the screen.

We regularly exchanged these comps with Picturiffic's artist, Shiho.  She would provide us with critical feedback which eventually narrowed down our designs to what the screens that we would actually use in game.

One struggle Mike and I had was adhering to the company's art treatment in the initial stages of comping.  This was sort of an exciting real world, industry experience where we had to adhere to certain guidelines to maintain the intended style and feel of the game.

Below is a sort of timeline of the changes that the comps went through.  They are primarily focused on the home and daily puzzle screen which were the two most prominent screens that would be featured in our mobile application.

This is a critical point in the comping stage where it was brought to our attention that we were straying away from the artistic style of Picturiffic.  I think it's evident that we made the drastic changes in our approach to these next designs that were necessary to adhere to the Picturiffic Style.  

 These are the initial comps that I shared with Shiho for the actual game play screen as well as an idea for displaying the leaderboard in a limited space.

This settings menu is an implementation of an idea that I had which was to strip all of the player information off of the puzzle screen and dock it in the settings menu.  My reasoning behind that was that I didn't believe that this information was critical to game play and would be more appropriate to show up after the puzzle had been completed or failed to show gains in energy, diamonds and level.

In the comp below I tried to implement the leaderboard in a way that would conserve more real estate.  In the original version of Picturiffic the leaderboard chunks had tabs that would pop up when other users made their guess.  Those tabs would also indicate whether or not their guess was right or wrong after the player made their choice.  I took this notification system and instead of using tabs I implemented a glowing effect around each leaderboard chunk which would save vertical space.  The different colors indicate whether or not the player has made a guess (blue) and whether that guess was right (green) or wrong (red) I also rearranged the elements on the leaderboard chunks so that they would still read well in their limited space.

This comp below is a redesign of the previous puzzle screens from above which implements the feedback that I received from Shiho.  It aims to clairfy the functionality of the leaderboard as well as rearrange elements like the hearts to make them seem more like an element of gameplay rather than a decoration.   



 

Finally, after a few rounds of revisions and suggestions from Brad and Shiho at Large Animal Games we settled on this home screen design for the mobile build.  It manages to make the Daily Puzzle the most prominent mode of play on the screen.  Similarly, the gameplay mode and create a puzzle mode manage to still look appealing and inviting without overwhelming the users visual field.  We also clarify the timer and make it relatable to the daily puzzle and only the daily puzzle.  Most importantly it achieves the look and feel of the original Picturiffic game.