Hussaina Wardhawala - Interaction Designer/Product Manager

Magma

Magma is a top-down 2.5D single player, stealth game where the protagonist plays as a dinosaur and has to save his/her village from Magma-enemies by diverting their attention and cleverly making his/her moves to open all the gates for the magma to pass through. After play testing with over sixty users, we realised that our game was the most suitable for kids of the age 6-8 years old.

From design document to digital prototype, I was responsible for the game design of this project and conducted five play tests, paving a more precise direction for our game. Rapid paper and digital prototyping refined most of our game design decisions. To test out stealth, we quite simply got testers to play a game of hide and seek with us, to learn the different ducking, sneaking and hiding techniques employed by them.

Some of the feedback we received for our game: “It reminds me of playing hide and seek as a child.”, “I love the whole dinosaur-lava chase.”, “This game is so simple, yet engaging for hours.”.
Operation Bastion

Operation Bastion is a 3D, top down, multiplayer, twin-stick shooter, based on Relic Entertainment’s Last Stand gameplay.This project, with Relic, was accomplished through an iterative game design and development process.

The project has been a great success both at the Centre For Digital Media and Relic Entertainment and presented at Show ‘n’ Tell (organised by and at Relic’s HQ).

The endeavor started with laying out the game’s objectives, and the team and I decided to build new mechanics, hitting the core pillars of Last Stand, ergo operation bastion came into being, which is a LAN multi-player RTS styled shooter game designed for the audience that loved and cherished every bit of Last Stand and Company of Heroes. The game would be played within 30 minutes and could be learnt by a non-gamer within a couple of minutes.

Roles & Responsibilities
I was the Interaction designer and producer on this project and was responsible for brainstorming, game conceptualizing, paper and digital prototyping, play testing and tweaking features, managing communication in a more development heavy team, being the point of contact with Relic and enforcing rules of scrum with both the teams.
Traverse helped me exercise Scrum and Agile in more detail, working in close proximity with developers and the importance of pivoting, as that played a major role in making our product usable. As an interaction designer for Mixed Reality; along with user tests, interviews with gym owners and climbing aficionados, I took up bouldering classes to better inform the final design of Traverse.
Zazoo

Zazoo, an IP of BizzyBaby Media, Bombay, India; is an animated web series for kids of the age 3 years up to 12 years old. The protagonist Za, and his alien best friend Zoo, together explore the world of planet Unali. Zazoo’s Augmented Reality game app (currently in the design phase) brings to life the character duo and their playfulness, for kids of the age 4-7 years old.

Being the experience lead designer and the creative director on this project, I designed and helped to develop a working prototype for Zazoo game app. The game essentially consists of more mini games, planned to be released each month with a new mechanic that the kids watching the web series can relate to and play with.

With Zazoo, I have learnt designing for Augmented Reality and applied my knowledge of UX of designing an app for kids, to it. While Zazoo was being designed, it was repeatedly tested with my own nephews who fall in the target age group and has given me much insight on laying out the in-game monetization structure for apps too.
F.A.L.C.O.N

Falcon is a 3D, couch co-op, twin-stick, vehicle-based shooter, created with Blackbird Interactive.We decided to opt for a couch co-op as it brings out the social aspect of playing together, allowing players to work as a team and give way for co-operative maneuvers like boosting teammates up during combat and providing cover for their partner. A vehicle-based gameplay was chosen because that is Blackbird’s forte.

Roles -
1. 3D Interaction Designer:

• Collaborated and communicated face-to-face on small, cross-discipline teams, namely, art, development, sound and with co-designers.

• Enforced co-operativity in the game by linking the power cores of the two players (vehicles) together with a narrative supported feature. The viewport of both the players would be constrained to one screen and their bodies would explode if they went too far from each other. Hence, enforcing co-op dynamics.

2. Level Designer:

• Laying out the level from flowchart to final playable prototype in Unreal Engine
Obediently listening to player's feedback

• Using an existing game, "Little Big Planet 2" for rapid prototyping to test the level and the co-op dynamics between play testers.

3. Producer:

• I made sure the art team was always involved in design and development decisions and vice-versa.

• Switching from designer to producer hat was quite interesting in terms of features that would stay or frag.

• Falcon was pitched by me at PvP (Pitch Vs Pitch) Game Circuit in July 2018, at Blackbird Interactive Studio.
Relapsis

‘Relapsis’ is a Virtual Reality transmedia story-telling experience based on a dystopic world, set in the year 2080. Artificially intelligent robots have taken over the world and there is a sickness/disease spreading all over. Relapsis was created as a free exploration world for the user, which takes them on a quest to solve a murder mystery, role-playing as a police officer/detective; from the physical world to the web terminal, thereon to a virtual world and back to physical reality.

Roles and Responsibilities:
On this project, I was wearing several hats, such as:

Production Manager –
Responsibilities:
Planning sprints
Maintaining Trello board
Conducting daily stand ups
Following up on art and design and combining with development work.

Conceptualization to Delivery – all the experiences were separately designed – physical, virtual and web. There are puzzles in both physical and virtual worlds. I had to wear two hats at once, viz., Designer and Production Manager and taking decisions on features like various puzzles, was difficult but achieved through Agile tools, like Bull’s eye and a supportive team.

Puzzle Designer –

Suspension of disbelief was needed to be achieved through planning each puzzle as if a simulation of the real-world mystery solving case.
The flow of the police officer’s (user) interaction was made seamless by adding a cue at the end of each puzzle that hinted the user to interact with a different world, for eg., When he/she interacted with the web-terminal to check their messages, they were directed to check the criminal reports, in the real world, which further led to findings and hinted them to put on their VR headsets and immerse into a conversation between the A.I. Robot and a doctor trying to work on a cure for the disease that is spreading.
The puzzles led to immersing the user into putting together the pieces of the puzzle and solving the mystery to spot the criminal behind an infamous murder.

Director of Interaction –
I was responsible for script writing and directing the video call with the police officer’s boss when the he/she is seated in a futuristic automobile which takes flight as soon as the officer(user) puts on the headsets. The video had to be succinct in providing the user with information about their task while immersing them into the role of a police offer/detective, also, introducing them to the aesthetic of the outside reality (virtual), which is a dystopian, cyber punk world with a blade runner aesthetic, based in Neo Bangalore, India.
WezRds Rush

My Contributions:

WezRds Rush is a VR tower defence game, built on the Oculus Rift and can be played on an array of headsets. You are the Knight whose Tower/Castle is in danger as enemies have invaded your precious kingdom and now wish to come after your casa.

Using simple interactions on the Rift controllers, you will be able to destroy these tiny monsters before they barge in. It is a First person defence game and because you are a giant, you are atop the huge castle and can see enemies clearly all around you.
The game takes inspiration from an older iOS game called Knights Rush (now obsolete), which appealed to us because of it's simple flinging mechanic and we decided to implement that mechanic into our game instead of doing the neurotypical hack-n-slash, shooters and bow & arrow in VR.
Roles -
1. Interaction Designer:

• Collaborated and communicated face-to-face on small, cross-discipline teams, namely, art, development, sound and with co-designers.

• Laid out the core mechanics and prototyped quick gameplay elements like flinging off enemies.

• Presented WezRds Rush at the Full-Indie held at the CDM on Oct 23, 2018.

As part of the UX exercise, while laying down features for the game, I did a Red Route exercise, which allowed me to prioritse our backlog and work towards releasing the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) as soon as possible. The features in bright red are the ones with most importance as they are used by the players most often and are what really constitute the game. The other features were pushed down in the priority list of features to implement, but still accounted into the MVP.
Through this exercise, we were able to narrow-in on our MVP.

2. Producer/Product Manager:

• I made sure the communication between Development and design teams was kept smooth and free-flowing. Managing Trello boards from development, Pinterest boards for Art and testing the mechanics over and over again.

• Ideation of this VR game and prioritization of tasks for each team were my main learning goals.

• Taking in feedback from testers and churning out crucial pivots comprised of some of my passions on building this game. We are part of the Oculus Start Program
Our Future Community (OFC)

Overview
Our Future Community is a 3D interactive video game that aims to increase awareness about climate change through academic education in grades 10th up to 12th (high school)

My Role
Senior Game Designer and Developer

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of game designers and developers through a design cycle :
- Define the problem
- Brainstorm solutions
- Eliminate solutions that have failed previously or those that don't match the requirements of external stakeholders
- Build interactive prototypes
- Test prototypes refine the design of solutions

• Maintain Trello board for tasks

• Conduct daily stand ups

• Follow up on art and design and combining with development work

• Create a Game Design Document which elaborates on the:
- Pillars
- Requirements
- Mechanics
- Aesthetics
- Purpose of the game

My Contributions: