Nunaka
Game Design, UX
Nunaka is an immersive 2D/3D educational game, combining a playful world of story and characters with a research-based approach to learning, created for children ages 3-5 within a small Alaskan community. The goal of Nunaka is to promote early education, culture, heritage, and language preservation, with intended use both in school and at home. Designed in Unity, the game was built for tablets, smartphones, and desktop/laptops, running on all major platforms.
3D World
Nunaka and its activities are rooted in playfulness, discovery, and authenticity. This is felt as the player explores the 3D environments while completing a variety of tasks. Within the 3D spaces, I designed and refined the interactions, level design, and much of the overall game flow.
Development
The process began with a learning goal, upon which the team and I built the game using culturally-relevant themes. I first created sketches of the vision, and then transformed these ideas to wireframes and prototyped the mechanics.
2D Minigames
Following extensive research, both remotely and on location in the village near Homer, Alaska, I was tasked with creating culturally-relevant concepts, designs, and prototyping for multiple 2D mini game mechanics to fit within the 3D world. These activity-based games included, tidal collection, cooking, picking berries, puzzles, headdress design, and fishing.
Next, we shared the initial designs with the client and community to ensure the cultural and educational goals were met. Once approved, I thoroughly documented all mechanics and designs to hand off to the art and development teams, with whom I worked closely throughout the development and testing phases.
