Project Goals

Trailblazer Heroes was born in the midst of anti-Asian hate during the pandemic. The project's goals are to:

I joined the project in its early conception. After the initial game designer left the project, I led the game design team to align gameplay to the project's goals; iterate through user feedback; and polish all aspects of gameplay, copy, and design for production.

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User Research / Competitive Analysis

I identified a gap between the game's initial collectible card game design and the project's goal to reach a wide audience. The complex strategy projected a niche market, so I gathered market and user research to support a shift to a more casual, social game. Although many of the team's initial ideas leaned towards complex gameplay, staying close to the initial design, I consistently advocated for simpler mechanics to align with our goals.

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Design & Iteration

Over many iterations of paper prototypes, we settled on a core mechanic of pattern matching, to avoid connotations of battle and lean into creative problem solving and strategy. Here I was able to explore my personal interest in motion, designing a system for card placement and movement (moving, swapping, replacing, removing) across 2 dimensions.

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Aligning game dynamics with PROJECT goals

Initially, our semi-cooperative gameplay rewarded individual players for completing Quests, leading to sabotage and tension. However, this clashed with our game's objective of AAPI heroes working together. We removed scoring and made the game fully cooperative, better reflecting the real-world dynamics of unifying efforts and fostering collaboration among AAPI advocacy organizations.

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Streamlining for user EXPERIENCE

Despite our efforts to simplify gameplay, players still found our re-designed rules to be too complex or confusing. After solidifying our core game mechanics, the majority of our iterations through user testing focused on streamlining gameplay and rewriting the rulebook to align with players' intuitive understandings and cultural forms.

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UI / UX design

In our initial design, we struggled to balance our goals for content knowledge and accessible gameplay. Text-heavy cards overwhelmed players and obscured gameplay functions. In our redesign, we re-prioritized information architecture, reduced content text to just enough to spark players' self-interests, and balanced gameplay text with icons for quick comprehension, aiding both new and experienced players.

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Takeaways

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Final Design

Our final design achieved two categories of learning goals:

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Players reported fun, light strategy gameplay and appreciation for the cards' beautiful artwork, illustrated by 30 diverse AAPI artists. Although many players were new to cooperative social games, most were excited by the unique style and gameplay.

Most importantly, we found that the game sparked critical discourse and reflection on how players' personal experiences relate to the themes of the game during table talk and after gameplay. Gameplay groups found value in finding representation of their favorite heroes and cultural items in the cards, and in learning from the cards and from other players' experiences.

The game is currently in sales & distribution. Game rules can be found at trailblazerheroes.com.

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