I've always wanted to make a videogame. Ever since kickin' over the Atari and getting my hands on my first Nintendo (which came with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), I've been a gamer with a real interest in all of the design, ui, and marketing that goes into a videogame. So, recently I decided to give it a try as an exercise in mobile ui design.
Objective: The aim of this project is to design a videogame; from the logo and look to how the user will interact with it. Due to the popularity of the mobile platform for gaming nowadays, I've elected design the game for the iPhone.
"I've never designed a game before...what should it be about?", I muttered to myself while vegetating in my cubicle at the day-job. Hours later, after a Netflix'd episode of the X-Files, it hit me..."ALIENS!" A game about alien abduction or invasion; who doesn't dig that? (hint: everyone digs aliens.)
I looked to the past for some visual inspiration, namely the 1950's...the golden era of space invader movies. The poster art for these films was fantastic. Bold colors, fat lines, weird perspective typography, scantily clad women in peril; they had it all.
But I didn't want to go with a retro-look, I wanted something "tweeners" could get a handle of visually. I remembered the cartoon "Ben 10", which pulls a lot of its' aesthetic from anime and traditional american cartoons like "Johnny Quest". The alien/monster characters have a great modern look.
So after a few hours of jumping from 1955 to 2011, I felt inspired enough to sort of meld the old-school bold look of alien thriller movies with the new clean-lined angular look of modern anime and american action cartoons.
For me, once I design the logo for something...the rest of the design just falls into place. So I decided to start there. First, I needed a name.
"Alien Abductors!"...no, that's not it. "Alien Invaders!"...lame.
I was stuck. Then, my wife, retelling a funny story that happened at work, said that someone in the office asked "What does that [button on the computer sreen] do? Can you use it to talk to aliens?!" Completely stealing inspiration from her, I thought "Talk To Aliens" would be a cool name for the game. I decided to run with it, but punch it up with a super-cool circa-1991 "Z" in the place of the "S" in "Aliens"...you know, to make it extra cool.
I did various sketches of logo ideas knowing only a few things:
Eventually, I had 1-2 designs I liked the best, so I inked and scanned them so I could get to work manipulating them in illustrator/photoshop.
After some spacing changes in Adobe Illustrator to make the letters a bit more cohesive, I added a layer of polish via lighting/shadowing, patterns, and outlining strokes. Then it was time to choose colors. I went with bright green and a redish-fuschia. In the end, the colors give it a modern look but it still has a sort of hand-drawn 50's sci-fi poster look to it. Or at least, I think so .
With a logo in hand, I started to see the rest of the project in my head. So...to the notebook!
During spare moments, I used my moleskin to jot down ideas to flesh out the "Talk to Alienz" gameplay. Because of the platform being for a mobile device, I figured the game has to be fast paced, turn based, and intuitive. Since the title alludes that you "talk" to aliens...I came up with this premise:
"Whoops! You've been abducted by alienz! They are covertly kidnapping humans in order to subject them to the most grueling, heart-pumping, merciless, mind- bending ...pop-culture trivia!
For years Alienz have been hiding just outside our solar system, listening in on radio transmissions emanating from earth. From "I Love Lucy" to "Lost" they've compiled what they think is a full body of knowledge on the human race.
A cautious race, they've decided this 2nd hand knowledge wasn't good enough. They're abducting people...just like you, to get up close and personal with humanity. To what end?! No one knows...
Make it through their questioning...and you just might get returned home with no memory of your experience. Fail the questioning, and...well...let's just say, these guys are not gentle beings!"
So, "Talk to Alienz" is a trivia game that spans various pop-culture topics. The gameplay is simple, your alien captor presents you with a question, you then get to choose from 4 choices. Choose correctly and you gain points as well as "endurance" which allows you to advance to high difficulty rounds of questions. Choose incorrectly, and you either get probed or jettisoned into space!
Now, for the fun part.
Equipped with the idea, logo, look, and basic gameplay concepts, I started doing layouts. Using an iPhone 4 .PSD template, I was able to get right to work in creating a "Talk to Alienz" title screen, home screen app icon, and the first screen of a new game.
Check out the work so far below:
More to come...
Going forward you'll see weekly updates on my progress. I'll be creating more in game screens that will flesh out the entire user experience.
So, stay tuned! And hey, if you're a developer and are interested in collaborating, don't be shy! Hit me up at joshuacharris [at] gmail.com.
You can email me there too if you just want to comment or have any advice. Thanks!
