Planisphere
For best experience, view this on my website
About
Planisphere is a relaxing sandbox puzzle game for PC and mobile about discovering and creating constellations through placing stars and drawing lines. It is intended to provide an easy pick up and play experience for players on the go and a comfortable experience for those who would rather sit down and play.
Currently, Planisphere is still in development and on hiatus.
Details
Year Released
-
Development Time
Still in development
Team Size
5
Roles
UX Design, Visual Lead, 2D Art, Project Management
Design Chat
User Personas
There are three main user types Planisphere is designing to please. We decided to focus most on Persona 1, since current trends point to a developing interest in more cozy, relaxing games for this audience. They would also be easiest to reach as most own either a PC or smartphone which can run Planisphere.
UX Style Guide
In this document, I establish a UX vision for Planisphere to aid my team in designing a consistent experience. I was inspired to create this UX Style Guide after reading Om Tandon’s post on Gamasutra. Below is a preview of some pages within our UX style guide.
Project Planning & Production with a UX Perspective
Here is the Gantt chart I created for the development and release of our demo, with 8 months of development time working part-time:
Because some of our team members have unpredictable schedules, I found we thrived better working on a milestone basis as opposed to strict hours. We worked using core Agile Development principles, which I modified to better suit our needs. This ended up being of much benefit to our team. I approached production from a UX perspective (where my team members and I are the product users) and wrote a log about my experience with this method of production. A preview of some pages within the production log:
Art Direction
Planisphere is a game designed to deliver a captivating and relaxing explorative experience. Its art direction is composed of stylized linework to carry home the message of its narrative and sell a modern fantasy. To aid with this, we used a colour palette of neutral yet contrasting colours, so a wide variety of users would be able to play. Working as an art lead with a design background, it’s my goal to make Planisphere as fun, pretty, and as accessible as it can be.
