Please tap on a game icon to view some of the work I've completed

                             

The Game

Lemmings was the big game in the studio at the time so there were many more people at the time, and I was less experienced so this is the only project where I didn't have a Lead role. At the time I was on another project, which was cancelled by the clients, and I am now back on V2 (so I can't mention it). For this reason I helped with the initial setup of Lemmings and was around to offer input and help out here and there, but I wasn't long on it full time before other obligations came about.
With lemmings being a known and loved brand we were aiming at the following markers:

• We should respect the previous brand and fanbase, but still be happy to overhaul the visuals and the core mechanics for use on mobile in the modern age
• We need to make the game fun and easy to pick up, but really add some exciting challenges parts to it to encourage spending
• Release regular updates to keep playing returning and playing, which also having meaningful updates and live events to keep the player enjoying it
• Create rules for ads and iAPs so as to offer them to the player at just the right time, maximising their use

The aim of the game is to guide the Lemmings to the level exit without them dying. Lemmings will walk in a direction until directed otherwise, so it's up to the player to give them the tools to build, dig, float and block, in an effect to get all of them safely to the end. Once here they would be "saved", and their total was used to reach new worlds on their journey to a new home. On top of the completion of the levels. there is also:

• New worlds to discover
• New Lemmings characters to unlock
• Challenge and Mayhem levels, designed only for the brave!
• Eggs to hatch and spinner to spin, earning various rewards

A big draw to the game is the fact the Tribes (the Lemmings characters you can unlock) are loosely based on various really world people, ranging from politicians, actors, singers and footballers, all the way to Greek gods, earthly elements and planets!

             

My Work

The work I did on Lemmings varies across multiple features, from helping define the high level gameplay and initial mechanics, down to the low level mockups and flow diagrams of certain screens and features.

The above 3 screenshots are mockups created by me for the initial FTUE (First Time User Experience), which was one of my early jobs on the project, and is where we would teach the player the very basic fundamentals of gameplay so they understand what the aim is and how to achieve it. I did around 6 different versions of the FTUE, totalling around 200 mockups, as we refined it to the final version above that you will still see in the game today. The steps I took for the FTUE creation were as follows:

• Research similar games and understand how they teach mechanics to players, specifically understanding their use of text, finger pointing, highlights and animation
• Understand the most important things we need to teach the player first, and what is secondary and can come later / be naturally learned by the player through gameplay
• Define how many levels we need to split the FTUE into, if it's overwhelming to teach them everything in one complex level, or if X levels is too many natural breaks for the player to churn, finding the sweet spot was important before structuring those levels
• Make basic drawings (really, really rough) for myself to create a basic story board of when things would be taught and how, including the layout of the level to make it feel organic for the player to learn this now e.g. if there is a block in front of them we can teach them to build over it or dig through it, but if the block was behind them there wouldn't be any logical point to doing that, you'd simply ignore it
• Once happy with the level layouts I'd create a more solid version in Photoshop with annotations for the team to read and the Leads to review
• After multiple iterations the structure of the level was defined, but there was the decision if to have a narrator or not. The examples I went through in no particular order were; An old, wise Lemmings, a village idiot, a mystical silhouette, and finally, erm, a potato. Because why not :D. Eventually we went with no narrator
• With the help of some design tools created by the programmers I then began bringing this FTUE to life in Unity by creating xml sheets with instructions to make it work
• The FTUE was created and play tested, before being sent off to official play testers outside the company, who we'd pay to review it and talk over it as they played, explaining what they understand and what they don't, a really useful exercise in case you're too close to the product and feel "it's clear", when it's not to a new player
• Once we reviewed the feedback and adapted it, it was then ready to go into the game, where we would use analytics to create a FTUE funnel so we could understand where real players are getting stuck and aim to update and improve it in future builds

The game has now been out for a few years and is still being played, enjoyed and updated regularly by the team. I will soon add more of the work I completed before, including the daily spinner, the main monetisation option and the meta game progression.