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Game Design, Super Cute Zoo (2009)
The player begins Super Cute Zooas either a veterinarian, a celebrity with a passion for animals, or a conservationist – a class I called “flower child.” The story is structured geographically like most zoos: The player begins with the Children’s Zoo, levels up to collect animals from North America, South America, and so on, ultimately collecting and playing with fantastical animals from the Imaginarium.
In each of the sections, players would complete Tasks. Tasks were very short stories like “Put on a Play Starring Short-Eared Owls” described as follows: “Short-eared owls pretend to have crippled wings in order to lure predators away from their nests. Natural actors!” The player would then spend their Energy points to complete that Task, and earn Experience Points that would level them up. I wrote about 72 Tasks after looking up different species’ behavior on Wikipedia and watching videos on YouTube. I would find the cutest animals on each continent and ask myself, What would be super cute to do with this animal? I wrote all of the Tasks, the items required, and the rewards into a spreadsheet. Engineers imported the information into our game engine.
I designed the look-and-feel of the website as well as specific interactions. During the social RPG section of the game the players would spend Energy, Stamina, and Coins on Tasks and Cute Contests, earning Experience Points, unlocking levels, new pets and powers. In addition, some Tasks dropped new animals for the players’ zoo collections.
The image here is from the interactive pet feature I developed for Super Cute Zoo, allowing players to touch, play with, and nurture a few of the animals that they were collecting during the Task play sessions.
We contracted a Flash-animation firm called Screamstream to build an Actionscript framework that our engineers could hook up to our game engine. Screamstream took frames of different poses and emotions that Phil Carnhel drew and animated them into tricks and emotional states of the animals – here you can see two frames of the Bobcat’s “Happy Dance” trick. I worked with our Chief Technology Officer to settle on values for all of these actions: what the player would spend in-game to heal or feed their animal.
The purple hippo you see here is both unhappy and hungry, so she is displaying an unhappy state to the player. Players can spend Energy, Stamina, and Coins (seen in the clouds to the left of the hippo) to interact with their animals. Feeding, doing tricks, petting, and healing the animals contributes to an overall happy pet who was always happy to see you.
Game Design, Super Cute Zoo (2009)
The player begins Super Cute Zoo as either a veterinarian, a celebrity with a passion for animals, or a conservationist – a class I called “flower child.” The story is structured geographically like most zoos: The player begins with the Children’s Zoo, levels up to collect animals from North America, South America, and so on, ultimately collecting and playing with fantastical animals from the Imaginarium.
In each of the sections, players would complete Tasks. Tasks were very short stories like “Put on a Play Starring Short-Eared Owls” described as follows: “Short-eared owls pretend to have crippled wings in order to lure predators away from their nests. Natural actors!” The player would then spend their Energy points to complete that Task, and earn Experience Points that would level them up. I wrote about 72 Tasks after looking up different species’ behavior on Wikipedia and watching videos on YouTube. I would find the cutest animals on each continent and ask myself, What would be super cute to do with this animal? I wrote all of the Tasks, the items required, and the rewards into a spreadsheet. Engineers imported the information into our game engine.
I designed the look-and-feel of the website as well as specific interactions. During the social RPG section of the game the players would spend Energy, Stamina, and Coins on Tasks and Cute Contests, earning Experience Points, unlocking levels, new pets and powers. In addition, some Tasks dropped new animals for the players’ zoo collections.
The image here is from the interactive pet feature I developed for Super Cute Zoo, allowing players to touch, play with, and nurture a few of the animals that they were collecting during the Task play sessions.
We contracted a Flash-animation firm called Screamstream to build an Actionscript framework that our engineers could hook up to our game engine. Screamstream took frames of different poses and emotions that Phil Carnhel drew and animated them into tricks and emotional states of the animals – here you can see two frames of the Bobcat’s “Happy Dance” trick. I worked with our Chief Technology Officer to settle on values for all of these actions: what the player would spend in-game to heal or feed their animal.
The purple hippo you see here is both unhappy and hungry, so she is displaying an unhappy state to the player. Players can spend Energy, Stamina, and Coins (seen in the clouds to the left of the hippo) to interact with their animals. Feeding, doing tricks, petting, and healing the animals contributes to an overall happy pet who was always happy to see you.