Devlog: Choosing a pet

The Social Circle is a transformative game about managing social media addiction. It explores this concept through a small tamagotchi- like pet that the player takes care of. The player can interact with this pet with ‘gestures’ like patting its head or pulling its cheeks. They can also perform larger ‘actions’ like feeding, bathing or use social media

Functionally, the pet would be a cute little guy that the player grows attached to but it also provides visual feedback of the increasing addiction. The pet starts out cheerful and bright eyed but as the game goes on, it could prioritise scrolling over sleep and that could make it have dark circles under its eyes. 

Making the pet appealing to a broad audience was important so that the player builds a relationship with it. I wanted to use bold solid colors with no borders because I wanted to animate some interactions using meshes in unity. The solid colors would hide pixel distortions more effectively compared to solid lines. I also wanted to design some characters with personality and some without. I was unsure whether the player would want a blank slate to see themselves in or a little creature with its own quirks and habits. 

In the end, I designed 8 pets and this is how I narrowed down the choice through a quick round of testing.I printed out the designs into small cards. I asked people to sort them into 3 categories-

Like - If you liked the pet’s design

Mid

Delete - If you hated the design

After each sorting, I took a photo of the board and asked them their thoughts.

I wanted to sort the data formally using a graph but during testing it became extremely obvious that there were 2 leading designs. They were consistently placed in the ‘like’ section and never went into the ‘delete’ section.

I brought the results to my team and we weighed in with our personal choice, #1