Lighten up Stress
Role: Research, Concept Development, Game Design, Visual Design, Conduct Playtest
Team: Solo Project
Created: May 2018
Studying in New York City I was living on fast forward mode. I came to realise that we’re working to achieve things faster and faster and there is no stopping. We've expected everything to be instantly gratified and we're running out of patience. This project aims to make an artistic statement about stress in modern life while shedding new light to re-think about stress.
Stress Express is a hybrid cards and mobile phones game that pokes fun at stressful, workaholic people. This game will allow players to experience their lives from a macro view where it mimics their busy, overworked, and overwhelmed life in a humorous way. The intention of this game is for players to reflect upon the absurdity of a chaotic life, and have a laugh about it.
This project has been selected by the NYU Game Center Incubator in the year 2018.
Conceptualize
Personal sketches and illustrations of daily frustrations that inspired me to create the game.
From a starting question statement of 'How might we create a tool to reflect on our stress levels?', I was especially inspired by click management games, as players progress in the game, the more greedy and chaotic their lives will become which I think gave a good humorous touch towards the concept. Therefore, I came up with two different directions for the game.
Online Click Management Game
Physical Click Management Game
Concept Validation
I bought the two games for a test of concept and it turns out users were able to understand my concept from the gameplay. The online game was more straightforward while the physical game was able to draw out more emotions because when players interact with each other and see each other stressed, the game became more absurd and fun to watch.
Game Design Process
Moving forward to portray my concept through game design, I go through multiple rounds of game design process which includes conceptualize, prototype, playtest, and evaluation.
Re-conceptualize
I continued to enhance my physical game design to make my concept even more clear, therefore I came up with game actions that can create players' emotions of franticness.
Re-protoype
I experimented with multiple gameplays, game art directions, rule book design, and packaging designs.
Re-playtest
After every prototype, I playtested the game over and over, which I clearly found out is the only way to make my game as strongest it could be. I practiced active listening and observations to understand which gameplay worked and which did not. Through an intensely iterative process of over 6 months with over 100 play testers, many agree that Stress Express is overwhelming but hilariously fun.
This project has been selected by the NYU Game Center Incubator in the year 2018 where I continued to improve the game.
Latest Concept
Through countless playtests during the incubator, I added more gameplay such as the bulletin board, and made the playing cards have visuals for players to take actions faster.
Stress Express has been exhibited at:
IndieCade East 2018
Game Dev of Color 2018
IndieCade 2018
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