My Group Project
Meowfitti
Meowfitti, a 2D adventure story-riched platformer game made on Unity developed by DIMSUM Gōngzuòshì, a team consists of 8 game development students within duration of 3 months of development time with 4 university lecturers as assistance and guidance.
In this project, I worked as an Assistance Designer who starting on the mostly designed contents in the concept and pre-production phases of the game, Meowfitti.
The game features a cat protagonist who revitalizes a dull, lifeless city through expressive graffiti, while skillfully evading enforcers and navigating environmental traps scattered throughout the urban landscape.
What I Did during the Development
In this project, my primary contributions were during the concept and pre-production phases, where I focused mainly on designing core content. My responsibilities centered around shaping the non-player character (NPC) and their narratives as well as developing the game’s user interface (UI).
Additionally, I took an active role in drafting and maintaining the Game Design Document (GDD), ensuring its content was consistently updated to reflect the evolving development process.
The following sections showcase my design work along with personal insights that guided my decisions throughout the project.
NPC Stuffs
I designed four beginning NPCs during the phases to enrich the storytelling experience and immerse players in a world shaped by dullness and despair. Each NPC was crafted to reflect their emotional atmosphere of the setting while also enhancing gameplay and narrative depth.
The key NPC Rusty, who serves as a pivotal figure for the protagonist, Whisker. Rusty inspires Whisker with the idea of a color revolution and introduces equipment such as spray cans that grant jump and speed boosts. In addition to being a source of enlightenment, Rusty also functions as a quest-giver, guiding players through key stages of progression and driving the journey toward the game’s ending.
The four NPCs were designed to display chatboxes above them once the player interacts, with each NPC presenting unique poses and dialogue that reveal their personal feelings about the city in its current state. This feature not only conveys narrative depth but also helps players better understand the world’s atmosphere through character expression.
Before finalizing this approach, I explored several variations of chatbox designs. These concepts will be presented and explained in the UI section later.
UI Stuffs
During the concept and pre-production phases, I designed both the UI wireframe and the chatbox interface for the game. While several elements of the original wireframe were modified during the production phase, many of my core designs were retained and further enhanced, resulting in a more polished and visually engaging player experience.
In mostly screen UI wireframe, I included a small paw-shaped icon at the bottom of the screen. My intention was to use the inner space of this icon to display the spray cans, serving both as a functional slot and a subtle visual reminder for players that they could press the left or right mouse button while aiming to activate the spray boost at any time.
Additionally, I designed the chatbox UI to feature a fuel bar positioned beside the paw icon. This mechanic was meant to track the remaining spray can fuel, encouraging resource management and creating a more challenging, hardcore gameplay experience. Players would need to carefully manage their fuel rather than spraying indiscriminately.
Ultimately, this concept was replaced with a tutorial notice board explaining the left and right mouse button functions instead. While my original design was not implemented, I accepted this decision since it was our team’s first project and an important step in learning how to balance ambition with practicality.