We built every level around the eight engagement strategies from the class video “How to keep players engaged (without being evil)” by Game Maker’s Toolkit, so the research is played, not just read.
Pacing
The designer speaks one short line at a time, and every few lines the player gets to do something. Calm reading and active play take turns, and the loading screen lets players skip ahead.
Novelty
Every level brings a new mechanic: a guessing game, a character creator, an impossible challenge, a countdown store, a sorting puzzle, a negotiation and a quiz. No two levels play the same.
Anticipation
Locked levels in the top bar, teasers at the end of each level (“Shall we go shopping?”), “something new just dropped,” and the store countdown all make players want to see what’s next.
Goals
Clear targets at every step: a checklist of characters to make, a progress bar, achievements to unlock, and a character card to complete.
Positive feedback loops
Guessing the survey result accurately earns coins, and more coins make the store’s cape affordable. Sounds and achievement pop-ups reward every action.
Optimising systems
The character creator invites endless tweaking, and the store puzzle asks players to design the fairest store, then compares it with ours.
Fantasising about the future
Players choose whether to build their real, ideal or fantasy self, and Level 4 asks whether building your ideal self could help you become it.
Compelling challenge
The survey guess, the 15-second store timer, the negotiation and the impossible character challenge give players real decisions, and the impossible challenge is how they discover the representation gap for themselves.
How we followed the fun
Fail fast
We started with a Canva board, then a text-heavy website. Both explained too much, so we kept what worked and rebuilt.
Listen to the game
Playtesting showed the character creator was the most engaging part, so we rebuilt the whole project around it. Every level now starts from something the player builds or chooses.
Turn problems into features
Testing revealed our creator had no male body type. Instead of just patching it, we split body type and pronouns, the same design lesson our research found in Cyberpunk 2077 and The Sims 4.
One thing that never changed
Our research question: why do we create better versions of ourselves? Every version, from board to game, was built to answer it.