PLANET3: WEATHER AND CLIMATE IMMERSIVES
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Role: System / UX / Narrative Design
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Genre: Education Adventure
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Engine: Unity
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Developer: Bully! Entertainment
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Client: Planet3
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Total Dev Time: 2016; 5-6 months
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Platform: HTML5
The Weather and Climate Immersives were part of a larger project, Planet3. Intended to be used as interactive educational material for use in public schools, the idea was to teach middle school children various science subjects in a fun and interactive experience. It was in many ways like an adventure game and an interactive textbook as players would navigate an open area; talking to NPCs, collecting items to aid on their mission, and playing various mini-games before saving the day.
The majority of the experience was already made, it was my job to figure out what our 6th graders would be doing within it. It needed to account for all familiarity levels with apps and games.
Students don't have a lot of agency at school, which is why disinterested students have such trouble learning. Making these about discovery and experimentation gives that agency back.
School textbooks are very effective at showing complex information in a simple way, but its not very engaging. Inspired by how pop-up books make information unfold we could have an engaging version of that informational diagram found in text books.
Many of the big events needed to feel big without actually demanding much from the player. Making the interaction itself super simple but look big ended up working.
Sandbox style of play while maintaining that textbook diagram presentation was critical to making this engaging, educational and easy to follow.
TASKS / RESPONSIBILITIES
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Authoring GDDs, priority lists, and asset lists.
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Creating client-facing presentations and project updates.
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Managing and adapting project scope throughout the project's life.
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Wireframes for mini-games.
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Writing copy for each mini-game's UI.
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Writing up initial first draft dialog and helping establish structure and content of overall narrative.
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Designing the mechanics of mini-games.
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Researching, finding, and organizing real scientific data to ensure educational accuracy.