World Fry Divers

OVERVIEW

This game was developed by Sqkii for Lamb Weston Company. During the project brief, the client wanted to create a game that could celebrate and spread awareness of World Fry Day while building customers and consumers for their company. Although the celebration is widely known in countries such as the United States, the holiday is less known in Asia.

MY ROLE

Deputy Game Designer

THE TEAM

Ke Han Tan - Game Design Lead

TIMELINE

Oct 2022 - June 2023

SUMMARY OF CONTRIBUTIONS

  • Served as Deputy Game Designer on the project, and oversaw the overall development of the project with the Game Design Lead

  • Brainstormed, refined and designed the mechanics and systems of the game with the team according to the client's requirements

  • Documented Game Mechanics in a way that is easily understandable by our programmers

  • Translated 100+ of Figma Game Screens into words and functions onto our Game Design Documents

  • Illustrated game screens as a concept for the UX agency for client approval, and pitching purposes

  • Overseeing the UI/UX development of the game and working with UI designers to make suggestions that improve user experience

  • Balanced all characters (fries) combo moves and Player’s energy usage in Excel

  • Designed a system that takes merchant locations on a spreadsheet, and translates them into GPS coordinates for the devs. This was used to help simplify the process of getting the coordinates for over 200+ participating outlets.

  • Worked with QA and Dev teams to ensure the game is as bug-free as possible

Game Design

World Fry Divers is a web-hosted game meant to increase awareness of World Fry Day sponsored by Lamb Weston, a Potato supplier and food processing company. The two participating chains were Potato Story and Happy Potato based in Malaysia and Taiwan respectively with over 250 individual branches participating. I worked with the Game Design Lead to consolidate and design most of the game mechanics:

  • As a team, we brainstormed over 15 games, and consolidated them into the two best ideas ー (1) The fries diving game and (2) Potatetris and (3) Classic Potatoes Cooking game - into three full fleshed games and pitched them to the client

  • Fry Diving Mini-Game ー players can play as a fry and tap 3 to 5 buttons to perform various combos while diving into hot oil. We thought this would be a fun and addictive mini-game for players to try and discover new combos and unlock fries with unique combos. There is a combo library in the game. However, combos will not be unveiled unless the player has already discovered them to drive replayability.

  • Driving Purchases ー players can head to their local Potato Story/Happy Potato to purchase a set meal with fries to earn energy to play the game. Based on your score, players will be placed on a leaderboard, allowing them to obtain additional rewards.

  • Fry Buddy Collection ー We designed fry buddies to be as cute as possible, so players feel incentivised to collect and obtain their favourite fry types and redeem set rewards. I wanted each set to be named as cutely as possible to fit with the cute look of the fry buddies.

  • Gacha ー Depending on your score, players will receive a bronze, silver and gold choche. Depending on the cloche, your chance of gaining certain rewards increases or decreases. Players can receive a mixture of energy, fry buddies and vouchers from these cloches.

Game Concept Screens I drew for Pitching

Other design considerations we had that were not included in the final design were:

  • Global Leaderboard ー Players can compete outside their local leaderboard and play against other players across the globe and enter an elite leaderboard for prizes

  • Local Gyms - Players can head down to fry gyms similar to the concept of Pokemon gyms and battle for the top spots on the leaderboards. These players will be rewarded extra prizes

  • Combo Cooldown ー After players discover the best combo per fry, they will likely spam the same combo over and over again and avoid finding new combos. One way to avoid this is by adding a cool down or debuff for using the same combo several times in a row, forcing players to learn new combinations and moves.

Game Screens

I had full creative control over designing the concept and deciding the art direction for the project. I tried to make each illustration as fun and on theme as possible.

  • Colours and Theme ー I tried to use as many colours, shapes and symbols from Lamb Weston’s existing brand identity to strengthen Lamb Weston’s ownership of World Fry Day.

  • Fry Buddies Design ー I reused several shapes from their branding package and fry types. I wanted them to be both cute and simplistic while fitting with the brand image.

A selection of screens drawn by me

LambWeston’s Branding