A RPG this ridiculous deserves to be made in an engine that is just as ridiculous... and this engine happens to be PowerPoint?
My Role
I was the game and visual designer for this project! My team wanted to make this project as ridiculous and fun as possible, and what better way to do that than to have some fun with our design choices?
Finding the Art
All of the art assets (except for the textboxes) are from Adobe Stocks. These aren't placeholder assets, but they are the game's official assets. Why? Audience reception!
When we presented the prototype for this game, the goal was to replace the stock images with our own art assets, but the designers at our presentation loved how weird the stock images looked and believed that using them would up the ridiculousness of the game.
We followed their advice, and the Proof-of-Concept was a success! Players loved it!
Design
Design
PowerPoint is for presentations not for games, but I learned that anything can be used to prototype an idea. This project was putting that to the test.
To make this work, I used my previous PowerPoint experience and user stories to my advantage. When making the user stories for this game, my team and I already knew it was for gamers and lovers of the culture. This game is an homage to gamer culture and how it has evolved throughout the decades.
To get deliver that experience via PowerPoint features meant experimenting, which lead to me making features such as a selection screen and fight introduction screens to give the player a chance to be a gamer.
Selection Screen
To make this, I had to use three slides. One with only two images on the scene representing both paths and two slides that have information related to an image. To make it feel like an in-game selection screen, I changed the settings in PowerPoint that would have the slide change if the mouse hovered over the image.
Fight Scenes
The fight scenes went through multiple iterations to make them work. There are four choices per fight and out of the choices, there is only one choice that will allow the player to win. Why? For the fun!
The humor is the highlight of this game, not beating your opponent. If the player chooses the wrong choice, it leads to a humorous event that would make them curious in the other choices. If they chose the winning choice, the game ends, forcing the player to return to the beginning to see what would happen if they chose the other options.
Since this game is for a younger audience, most of them would understand the references being made in these options.
Early concept fight screen layout
Final fight screen layout
Images
Video
An example of a fight intro and gameplay.
Thank you for viewing!