Chickz

01. Context

Chickz is a casual mobile sorting game developed as the final assessment for the Mobile Game Project course in the Digital Creation program at UCS. The challenge: build a concise, realistic game in about 3 months, in a team of two.

Production followed the course schedule, with three deliveries (Prototype, Internal Playtest and Final Version) and ended with an open Project Showcase at the university.

02. My Role & Responsibilities

I worked as Game Designer and Programmer, owning design documentation, task planning (Hack’n’Plan) and the Unity implementation of every system, while Laureen handled art, audio and UI.

Game Design

• Game Loops: Designed the core loop and, after playtest feedback, an external loop (play → collect coins → unlock collections → play again) to add replayability.

• Mechanics: Designed the swipe sorting mechanic, focused on mobile usability.

• Systems:

  • Evaluation: rewards correct sorts with points and combo; wrong sorts cost a life and reset the combo.

  • Combo: scales difficulty and reward together (timer speed, spawn rate, points and spawn rarity).

  • Chicks: 3 types (Male, Female, Special) and 4 rarities (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary), organized in collections.

  • Spawn: two-step spawn system driven by the current combo.

  • Special Effects: timed effects (spawn ratio, timer slowdown, point multiplier), built to make adding new effect types easy.

Programming | Unity

• Implemented all designed systems.

• Used Scriptable Objects for Chick and Collection setup, and for a progression balancing system.

• Used events for communication between systems.

• Optimized spawning with dictionaries, avoiding iteration over every Collection on each spawn.

• Implemented data persistence (unlocked collections, quantity collected per Chick, collection completion %).

• Implemented UI, audio and sound tuning, and standardized assets for in-game use.

Documentation & Iteration

• Maintained design decisions in the Game Design Document.

• Built spreadsheets for content and balancing management.

• Redesigned systems to keep replayability based on internal and open playtests.

• Balanced game and progression using playtest data.

• Worked with Laureen on new collections, visual direction and game feel.

03. Design Challenges & Solutions

The biggest challenges were scope and execution, driven by two constraints: time and workforce. We had about three months and a team of two with little game development experience, though we had worked together before, which helped communication.

To deal with this, we:

• Split the work: I handled design documentation, task planning and Unity implementation; Laureen handled art, sound effects and UI.

• Defined a realistic scope: a casual game with a simple core loop, but with mechanics and systems that were easy to scale.

The replayability problem. After the first iterations, the core loop was fun, but finishing a match left a feeling of “is that it?”. To fix this, we:

• Built an external loop: an economy system and a new loop of Play → Collect Coins → Unlock Collections → Play Again.

• Created collections: we grouped Chicks into themed collections, purchasable with the coins earned, which changed what the player sorts in the main loop.

Besides solving replayability, this decision gave us a way to expand the game after launch, since new content can be added indefinitely.

04. Results & Learnings

Chickz taught me a lot. As a Game Designer, I got to build systems and express my creativity, and had my first experience with the iterative cycle of designing, developing and testing mechanics. Exposing the game at the playtests showed what worked and what was confusing. As a Programmer, I explored more complex code structures like Singletons, Scriptable Objects and Event Systems.

Despite the short timeline, and learning as we built, we were very happy with the result. We met our design goals and delivered a prototype that still needs refinement but proved to be fun and engaging. The game was well received in the internal playtests and at the Project Showcase, and gave us many insights for future improvements.

Personally, my favorite moment was watching my grandmother have a great time playing a game I made. Moments like that crown the whole process and reward the hours put into the project. Making games is really cool.