While attending the ELVTR UX/UI for Gaming class, we were given the chance to reimagine our favorite game out of a small list throughout the course. On that list was Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which is a series I have held dear to my heart since I was small kid playing Wild World on my Nintendo DS (yes, the big brick-y one!). I chose to reimagine it as a competitive entry in the series, where you compete online with other players to see who is the best bug-catcher or angler.

My Roles & Responsibilities	Project Length
UI/UX Engineer Created user profile Created UI style guide & 2D assets Implemented UI mockups	22 August - 13 October, 2024

• Challenges

• Since this project was for a UI/UX class, I was only given a limited amount of games to choose from when working on this project. I got lucky that Animal Crossing was on the list; a lot of the other games I had never played or were not fond of.
• I used to be a competitive gamer, but this was way back in the day before there were real eSports leagues like there are today. I had to study a lot of modern competitive games to realize what that world was really like.
• This class was very UX-heavy, which I was less experienced with. Most of my work done in this field has been around UI design.

• User Research & Target Audience

User Information

Who is the ideal user? A user of any age that is able to play video games. Someone who is into competitive gaming. Someone who is either very familiar with the Animal Crossing franchise or is completely new to it, but wants to try this game because it is different than the average entry in the series.

Motivations

Why would the user play this game? User wants a game that is competitive but isn’t a first-person shooter type. User is a fan of the Animal Crossing series and wants to play this new entry. What would motivate the user to continue using this game? The user likes the idea of going up the ranks and wants to be a top-ranked player. The user may like the difference between this game and previous Animal Crossing games.

Constraints

What would be the reason(s) the user stops playing or uninstalls the game? Internet connection is required to play and it must be good enough to support online connection to game servers (with preferably the lowest ping possible) - if the user has poor or no connection, the game is not playable. As this style of game is a departure from the regular “cozy” vibe of the average Animal Crossing game, it may not be as interesting or fun to a returning player if they like a more “relaxed” game style.

• Player Journey & Decision-Making

To properly drill down into how a user experience works, I studied the beginning of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I also did this to understand what previous Animal Crossing players expect out of the games and to see the different design and experience elements I could incorporate into my reimagination of the series.

Player Journey

Decision-Making Paper Prototype & Flowchart

• Wireframe

• Style Guide & Mockups

• Results

• For my work on this project throughout the course, I was able to score a 115/100.
• As I mentioned, I used to play competitive games but not in any sort of professional capacity. I switched to “cozy games” since I didn’t want to deal with the stress of “having to win”... However, this meant that I never became familiar with the world of eSports. This project helped me understand how different they are from regular online games.
• I formally put together my first portfolio entry. I had worked on projects in the past that I am proud of, but I never created my portfolio until this course gave me a good outline to work with.