Problem

Historically, women are an under-represented group in STEM related careers and college courses. Patriarchal gender role expectations have discouraged young women from entering into these fields. These expectations are communicated both explicitly and implicitly to children early on, so it is important to provide an alternate voice encouraging young women to consider entering into these fields.

Background

The game should be both educational and fun, allowing the user to learn concepts related to a specific STEM subject. Design the concept, story, and game UI elements considering the needs and wants of users. Use an AI image generator to create concept art that consistently demonstrates the theme.

INSIGHT

I knew that the game needed to feel cute and relaxing - inspired by the popularity of the “Cozy” gaming genre. I decided early on that a 16 bit pixel art style would be best. Midjourney was wonderful for generating pixel art to demonstrate what the world looked like. I was able to generate characters, background images, and foreground image elements that could easily be edited in Photoshop to show environmental change over time. There was a more significant limitation with creating UI elements and icons in a consistent style. Instead, I pivoted to hand drawing most of these elements myself using a pixel brush in Procreate.

UI Design

In InDesign I developed a pixel-art style logo for the game, finalized a color palette and typographic style. These decisions informed the art I would generate from Midjourney for background images and characters going forward. As I collected images for the scenes I would need to demonstrate, I hand drew UI elements and icons for menus, buttons, dashboards and maps. I overlaid these graphics in their respective positions over the game art, keeping to consistent spacing sizing and alignment rules.

The Logo

Inspired by other popular moderna and retro pixel art games like Alchemist World, Ikenfell, and Mystic Quest, I went for a pixel art style logo with drop shadows and decorative elements related to the game’s story and theme.

Website Design

After developing all of the branding elements, I applied them to a landing page design to promote the game. Here I included themed border elements to frame each section of the website, and featured relevant game art.

AI Use

I used AI in the development of this game in two stages. Once at the beginning, utilizing Google Gemini as a brainstorming and research partner. And again using Midjourney to generate themed backgrounds and character art to illustrate the immersive world of Green Guardian. This allowed me to create a higher fidelity prototype of the game than I would have been able to showcasing UI elements alone.

RESEARCH

I spent much of my time on this project in the research, concepting, writing, and planning stages. Even though I would only be demonstrating a few game functions, it was necessary to flush out most of the game mechanics and storyline from the start. After reading some articles on young women in STEM, young women and gaming, and considering some of my own experiences with educational games (from the teacher perspective), I decided on a pixel art Stardew Valley inspired role playing game focused on environmental and animal conservation - a topic that many young people increasingly care about.

Game Mechanics

I recorded my research, wrote three user archetypes to better understand my potential user’s wants and needs, and surveyed a few young gamers in my life. Then I moved on to writing the story and developing game mechanics. I knew that I wanted the user to interact with animal-like creatures and be able to make positive changes in their environment that could be seen in real-time. It was important for the player to go through the entire process of discovering a problem, learning more about the context of the issue, taking steps to resolve the issue, then seeing the positive impact that their interventions made. I wanted them to literally see and feel the positive impact they could make, learning along the way.

Story

I settled on a story of a conservationist guild called the Green Guardians and the revitalization of an abandoned creature rehabilitation center. The player would be a new recruit who has been tasked to get the Wildwood Rehabilitation Center up and running again, and to work on solving the variety of environmental issues in the areas surrounding it. Taking inspiration from the UI HUD of games like Potion Permit, Moonlighter, and CatQuest, the game allows for free exploration of the various environmental regions, the ability to collect and use tools, items, maintain notes in a journal, and crafting.