Graduator
a roguelike job fair simulator
The Context
I was the UX designer for my senior year capstone project Graduator, a game for web, pc, and mobile inspired by our experiences trying to get jobs in the tech industry after graduation.
We call the game a “roguelike job fair simulator” because the game’s genre was inspired by popular roguelike bullet hell games, such as Enter the Gungeon, Hades, and The Binding of Isaac.
Throughout the 10 month project, our design evolved significantly, going through several iterations and prototypes. In fact, at the very beginning, we weren’t making a game at all.
The Process
Our team, Whiteboar, initially began designing an interactive solar system exhibition called Music of the Spheres. Spheres would invite users to walk around the orrery holding an RFID device, and as they approached the planets we rigged with proximity sensors and speakers, that planet’s assigned note or chord plays through the speaker, getting louder as the person gets closer.
We built a digital prototype of the exhibition for testing, and when events of the pandemic encouraged us to shift gears to a digital project, we cannibalized our work on the Spheres prototype and started making games.
We called the project Toybox. We wanted to take a handful of simple components and elements (like basic shapes and colors) and combine them in different ways to make several little games, as if the player were rooting through their toy boxes or closets for something to play with.
As we conducted feasibility, desirability, and usability tests, our ideas became more concrete. Testing revealed the most popular games were the faster, more interactive ones, so we made the decision to focus on making a single, more robust experience.
As graduating seniors, we keenly felt the struggles of breaking into industry and wanted to reflect that, with a little bit of sarcastic levity thrown into the mix. The decision empowered us to make a game for us, for our cohort, and for anyone who is familiar with that particular post-graduation meat grinder.
Inspired by TeamLab and Meow Wolf, Spheres was designed to be a room-sized exhibition. This was an early sketch of how we might build the rotation mechanism.
A Figma sketch of what Toybox would look like, using screenshots of our inspiration games (left to right - Geometree Wars, Leaf Blower Revolution, Tetris, flOw) as thumbnails.
The Result
Graduator takes place at a job fair hosted by local companies. The player character (The Graduate) has to “market theirselves” by throwing resumes at the ambassadors at the fair, while avoiding incoming enemy fire, which are business cards.
Once The Graduate has grown their network by giving resumes to everyone present, they enter the boss battle: the interview with The Recruiter.
We thought it was funny to juxtapose the mundane nature of job hunting with the frantic gameplay of a bullet hell. Seeking employment is often a stressful, frustrating experience, and Graduator nods to that with the intensity of its gameplay and the rewarding feeling players get when they “nail the interview” and get the job.
We believe the levity of Graduator belies the emotions we’ve designed it to evoke, and our user tests revealed a greater emotional connection and more rewarding experience, due to its theme, than any of the prototypes we tested before. That poignancy was our metric of success — if players empathize with our game, our design vision is fulfilled.
The Graduate is navigating the job fair, throwing his resume at attendees while avoiding their incoming business cards.
The Recruiter, the boss of Graduator players must defeat to get hired.
The Reflection
Our design changed several times throughout the capstone project, and there were a lot of valuable lessons learned therein. Foremost is that we learned how to be nimble. It can be painful to have to abandon a lot of work, and it’s therefore easy to succumb to the fallacy of sunken costs. We resisted our first major pivot, even though it was the correct design decision.
As the year progressed and events of the pandemic unfolded, we became agile as we learned how to abruptly change course. While frustrating at times, the experience sharpened my design and leadership skills as I endeavored to keep the team (and myself) motivated and on track.
Designing, testing, and developing games is fun. Sometimes, it hardly feels like work. On a personal note, I like getting into the heads of my users to better anticipate their behavior and make useful, usable, equitable things they enjoy. Understanding and modifying behavior is the original lure that drew me to UX design. Providing value by empowering people to enrich their lives is the keystone to that.
Graduator capstone presentation.
Our team logo.