Video ALT: A looping video of Skye the dragon flying through the game world an interacting with a variety of objects and puzzles.
Skye Tales is a cosy fantasy game where you play as Skye the friendly dragon as they help out the denizens of the world through passive and mindful puzzles. Skye Tales is aimed at children and released on Nintendo Switch and developed with Unreal Engine 4.
It was originally a student project called Glaze for Dare To Be Digital 2016 and won a grant from Channel 4, leading to the companies establishment and the continued development of the game up until release in 2023.
My Role - UX Designer
I joined Puny Astronaut in 2019 as a UX Designer. Initially my role involved working with the company’s CEO to develop the game pillars and UX goals of the game as it went through shifts in creative direction, which led to the game you see today.
The role was a typical jack-of-all-trades indie role which had me defining UX pillars, creating and testing wireframes, concepting UI art, developing high-fidelity assets, implementing the assets in widgets, adding functionality with visual scripting, and evaluating the game through user research and testing.
The Journal
I spoke about the development of the UI at Develop: Brighton in 2021, focusing on the in-game Journal which hosted the game’s major menus. I pushed for the book design which would match the tactile feel the team was aiming to emulate through gameplay. The scrapbook became a highly visual way to track the players journey through the game, using stickers to reward the player in a colourful and tangible collage that helped to remove the need for literacy and make it more appealing to younger players.
HUD & UI
Other elements of the UI on the HUD were light in colour and complexity. The focus was providing players with rewards as they progressed through puzzles, but not distracting them or directing them through the world. It represented part of our game pillar “a world that couldn’t be happier to see you” by praising the player as they explored and interacted with the world at their own pace.
Loading Slates
Using the paper style of the journal, I created loading slates for the game using the incredible concept art by Dave MacLeod. This helped to showcase Dave’s amazing work as well as creating engaging and colourful loading screens that could spark the imagination of those playing.
Video ALT: Showcase of the Visual Filters and Audio Sliders for Skye Tales.
In 2022 I gave a talk at the Games Accessibility Conference Europe about the accessibility process for Skye Tales, including a deep dive into our highly customisable High Contrast and Desaturation filters, inspired by games like Uncharted and Ratchet and Clank. We gave the player as much agency as we could to adjust the filters to their needs and I went on to evaluate those filters through Accessibility User Testing with testers recruited through AbleGamers.
Accessibility
Skills development at Puny had been self-directed as there were no senior members for me to learn from and the code team was very stretched, so my programming was mostly self-taught. So, in 2021 I began a Limit Break mentorship with Robert Macdonald of Splash Damage, as I sought to learn more about UI optimisation, programming and design. He was and continues to be an excellent mentor to me, and he began to push me towards accessibility, a topic which I’d (ironically) found overwhelming. Through his guidance I began to learn more about accessibility in games development and push for Skye Tales to excel in this area.
