Designing a social game

We've had a nice busy 2010 so far here at Yoomee HQ. A project I've really enjoyed working on this month is Rockhigher.

A while ago I was tasked with designing an interactive game for Student Babble, one of our social neworks. The aim was to come up with a range of cheeky characters that could be collected, compared and traded to give the users a way of expressing themselves and keep them coming back to the site for more.

We decided to go with a music theme and came up with the idea of building and managing your own band. The more questions you answer correctly, the more points you get, and the more musicians and equipment you can buy. The game centres around a stage where you can showcase your band, which improves depending on what level you're on.

At first it seemed like a daunting task as I had to come up with a whole library of different musicians and equipment before the game even started - around 50 different illustrations in all! After some sketchbook time I came up with a direction I was happy with, so I moved onto the computer.

The characters were developed in Adobe Illustrator, before being exported and put into the game. I'm really pleased with the result!

For more screenshots check out the Rockhigher case study.