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Feed the bear
Building Adventure, a Puzzle Game for Winter-Ready Bears
Feed the Bear is a charming puzzle game where you help a bear gather enough food before hibernation. Match food icons to solve puzzles and prepare the bear for winter. Quick thinking and strategy are key as you race against time to ensure the bear is well-fed! Perfect for kids and puzzle enthusiasts alike.
Year: 2020
Project Type: Coursework
Produced: Independently
Feed the bear
Building Adventure, a Puzzle Game for Winter-Ready Bears
Feed the Bear is a charming puzzle game where you help a bear gather enough food before hibernation. Match food icons to solve puzzles and prepare the bear for winter. Quick thinking and strategy are key as you race against time to ensure the bear is well-fed! Perfect for kids and puzzle enthusiasts alike.
Year: 2020
Project Type: Coursework
Produced: Independently
Objective
Create a game concept centered around bears, designing the primary icons and interface to visually represent the game’s theme.
Research
Research is essential to my design process, helping me understand the subject and audience. I start with a clear plan to guide a focused approach. This market understanding and awareness of trends shape my design decisions, ensuring they are relevant and effective. You can view the complete market research here.
Accordion Content
- Learn about bears and the foods they eat
- Learn about the target audience of Feed the Bear
- Who is the target audience?
- What are some foods that bears eat?
- What are some common behaviors of bears?
Primary Research
- Understand what bears eat and their behaviors
- Learn about the target audience and what appeals to them
- Black bears are very opportunistic eaters. Most of their diet consists of grasses, roots, berries, and insects. They will also eat fish and mammals—including carrion—and easily develop a taste for human foods and garbage. Bears who become habituated to human food at campsites, cabins, or rural homes can become dangerous and are often killed—thus the frequent reminder: Please don’t feed the bears! (National Geographic)
- According to the survey, puzzle and strategy games are most popular with both groups, with 77 percent of parents playing and 78 percent of children. Adventure games are the second most popular genre with kids, followed by simulation and building games in third. (Gamasutra)
Accordion Content
- Taking the HMW questions, I started my brainstorming process to come up with solutions for each of these problems. I decided to use mind mapping so that I could quickly generate as many ideas as I could. This is an extract of my brainstorm results.
Food Preferences: Bears enjoy a variety of foods, including fish, honey, and vegetables, which can be integrated into the game’s concept. These food types can serve as key elements in the gameplay, where players “feed the bear” different items as they progress.
Target Audience: The primary audience for the game is young children who are already familiar with and enjoy vibrant, playful, and colorful games like Mario Kart. The design should focus on creating a fun, engaging experience that resonates with this demographic.
Design Elements: The game’s design should emphasize playfulness, using friendly, vibrant, and colorful visuals. Circular and round shapes could be incorporated to enhance the approachable and fun atmosphere, making the game more appealing to kids.
Game Style: The mood and style of popular games like Mario Kart can be adapted to fit the “Feed the Bear” concept, combining playful elements with dynamic, interactive gameplay to create a memorable experience for young players.
To support my insights, I created a mood board inspired by my research to capture the overall visual style and tone. You can view the mood board here.
Strategy
To define the problem, I created Point-of-View (POV) Statements for goal-oriented ideation and How-Might-We (HMW) Questions to guide brainstorming sessions. These were developed based on insights and needs identified in my preliminary research.
The Design
Accordion Content
- After gathering enough information about what and who I’m designing for, I started sketching ideas for the logo and brand. This enables me to quickly explore and review my concepts before adding them into a digital program.
- To get a better visualization of what the design could look like, I created digital variations of my sketches. Digital roughs are great for making quick changes of colors or components before finalizing the design.
- The design embodies a fun and playful experience. The bright colors and round edges reinforce the game as friendly, playful, and humanistic.
- A game for the children. The game UI follows on the colorful and playful style of the icons. Several screens were made for a better visualization of the game.
Playful, Vibrant,
Engaging.
The Ultimate Bear
Puzzle
Challenge.
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