Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells

Match 3 Puzzle Mobile Game

Role
Design Lead

Employer
Zynga

Responsibility
People Management, IC

I led a team of exceptional XD Designers on the Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells project. My primary focus is to enhance pipeline efficiency and the quality of deliverables, while also representing the XD perspective within the Senior Leads group. I collaborate across various disciplines to ensure that all current and future features on the roadmap are feasible and completed to a high standard. I frequently engage with leads from Production, Product, Design, Art, Engineering, and QA to clarify expectations for XD deliverables and to hold my team accountable for meeting those standards.

DIVISION OF LABOR

In the context of gaming, UX (User Experience) shapes the overall structure, while UI (User Interface) adds the visual elements. As experience designers on the Harry Potter project, we develop skills essential for excelling in both areas. Although there are overlaps and tasks that might be redundant, a crucial aspect of becoming an effective designer is understanding where the division of responsibilities lies within the team.

At Harry Potter, we have a clear spectrum of roles:

PRODUCTION PIPELINE

We operate in a fast-paced, multi-timezone team. Our development approach is therefore fully written out and followed faithfully. In a big picture, XD’s involvement covers 100% of the entire production process from 1-pagers all the way to QA sign-off.

OUR WORKFLOW

The workflow can be broken down into pre-production work and production work.
In general, the further down the time spent, the harder it is to make big changes. Thus the earlier in the process, the more wild iterative / ideas are explored. Where as oppose in the later development stage, we would be fixing alignment, overlap, animation timing issues..etc

More often to our best of our knowledge and experience, we want to answer all major questions upfront, for example, Is this something our players want? Are the players familiar with the feature concept? Would they find this fun as oppose to something else? (opportunity cost) Is this feature achievable within this timeframe?

FEATURES HIGHLIGHT

CLUB CHALLENGE

Enticing social Club Event via an interactive map with hidden rewards and special encounters.

GOALS & REQUIREMENTS

  • Bold beat is a feature that delivers sustained revenue lift of 10% or more.

  • With roughly 400k DAU, pulling in about $80 ~ 90k a day, ARPDAU roughly $0.23. Club Challenge was aiming to put us over the $100k day mark. 

MY RESPONSIBILITIES

As the Lead Designer for the game time, I have to oversee every feature in development:

  1. Setting design milestones & reviews

    • Entire event flow completion & edge cases review

    • Wireframes completion 

    • Color mocks completion

    • Unity implementation

    • QA

  2. Ensuring full tasks coverage

    • Matiously create an exhaustive list of assets / screens required and assigning them accordingly (UI, Concept, Animation, SFX)

  3. Regular stakeholder meetings

    • Sync on progress

    • Share concerns

    • Prioritize roadmap & allocating resources strategically

  4. General guidance and feedback

    • Give UX / visual feedback and set expectation on the focal point

PROVIDING THE INITIAL DIRECTION ON THE MAZE APPROACH

At the very beginning, the creative leadership (the Art Director and I) needed to provide guidance on the approach.

I proposed we take either of the directions:

  1. Immersive 3D maze

  2. Top-down maze

Both have their own merits of pros and cons. What was the deciding factor is our player based are geared towards casual-gaming, which wouldn't have a strong appeal to an immersive 3D experience.

MANAGING THE MAP EVOLUTION

I explored the initial map concept:

  • each node represents a unique puzzle

    • a regular node is an easy puzzle

    • medium node is a mini-boss

    • large node is a challenging boss

GUIDING THE HUD UI AND ICONS

I setup regular check-ins with my UI Designer, and Concept Artists to provide feedback and guidance concerning visual presentation, and user perception.

I always tried to steer the feedback session back to how a player would perceive the icons, and the imagery. If a player fails to understand what the objective is, any good-looking art can't make up for it.

ENSURING SCREENS AND FLOWS COMPLETION

This feature have over 20 screens and each screen has its unique interaction. We were constantly checking for flow completion, edge cases handling, and ensuring the entire game loop was 100% accounted for with top-quality animation, VFX and visuals.

LEARNINGS / RESULTS

What went well:

  • Club Challenge was delivered on-time (which is rare for bold beat), primarily due to the precision in planning and scoping out work.

  • Mapping tools were created for game designers to create custom maps with minimal support from artists and engineers.

What didn't go well:

  • We missed a major celebration moment. Players were left with an underwhelming moment after defeating the final boss.

  • Mixed results on revenue performance. The upkeep of the feature didn’t justify the opportunity cost where other minor features can perform relatively better.