Unicornelia
A Unicorn simulator game about managing mental health
Role: Lead game designer & developer
Responsibilities: Game design, game development, interaction design, hardware development, prototyping, video editing
Team: Unicornelia was built with Jane Mitchell, Maddy Siriouthay and Dylan Negri
Exhibitions & Awards: Nominee best alternative controller GDC 2018, alt.ctrl.gdc 2018, PlayNYC 2018, Indiecade 2018, Makerfaire 2018
Game Narrative
You are Unicornelia, a rising sparkle statistician at a prestigious but very taxing job. In addition to managing your work life, you must balance your social, love, and family life, all while trying to keep it all together.
Unicornelia is a game about finding balance between inner emotions and exterior responsibilities.
The game controller asks players to figuratively and literally embody the lifestyle of Unicornelia. Players must decide what's best for their mental health by either completing tasks with their horn or using their inner 'feelie' buttons to minimize them.
design
Process
Background
Unicornelia was inspired by personal challenges struggling to maintain mental health while keeping up with obligations and responsibilities.
Wanting to do something proactive, the team decided to channel these feeling into something bright and fun.
Why a game?
Although we've made a lot of progress as a society, discussing mental health can often feel heavy and intimidating. By creating a game, we hoped to lower that initial barrier and make the topic less tabu through silliness and fun.
The tasks in the game were taken directly from personal life experiences so players would feel less alone and ultimately more comfortable discussing their own issues.
Game Play
Players are presented with task popups on their computer monitor. Players can choose to...
-
'complete' tasks they think are positive by inserting their horn into the task's corresponding color hole
-
OR 'minimize' tasks by tapping their corresponding feelies button.
Tasks are sorted into 4 areas of Unicornelia's life: Work, friends & family, love, and self care.
At the end of the experience, players are presented with a 'life analysis' graph showing how they performed in each area of Unicornelia's life.
Controller design
The body of Unicornelia was a repurposed beach tent fabricated with plush white fabric and a purple tulle mane and tail. We chose this low to the ground structure so players would have a restricted range of motion, really embody the character, and get out of their own heads a bit.
The interior 'feelie' buttons were constructed using mega arcade buttons and wrapped with a googly eyed plushy.
The monitor was outfitted with a custom frame and interface complete with removable conductive cartridges.
Players operated the interface with their horn (aka plastic champagne flute embellished with hot glue and sparkles). The game was programmed with Arduino and Processing (java based IDE)
Unicornelia on the road
The game toured all over the country and was shown at GDC, Indiecade, Makerfaire, and PlayNYC.
The team created custom merch including keychains and postcards. Unicornelia always drew a crowd and was a big hit across all ages.
