Dressipher

Dressipher is a co-operative dress-up party game where players try to guess each other's outfit using prompts written by each other. Inspired by party games (like Wavelength and Jackbox Party Pack) and dress-up games (like SuitU and dress-up minigames in children's games), I wanted to innovate on dress-up mechanics, create a social experience that encourages people to comfortably discuss fashion, and allow for creative inputs that will ensure some fun running jokes in friend groups.

While making this game, I learned how to develop using Unity's Relay server. I used this opportunity to learn how to design how the networking aspect would impact the game; this included designing what the host is able to do vs the clients, at what point are messages sent to each player (and how to reduce messages sent between devices), and what happens if a player disconnects (example: most of the time, if a player disconnects, their info is automatically removed from the session. With that said, if they leave at the end of the game, their info is still active so that players can see results based on each player. Their info is only wiped once a game starts up again).

As this is a dress-up game, the designs of the outfits was important to ensuring the players had the correct information they need to properly play; thus, multiple rules were put into play. Some of the rules included making all of the outfits green and greyscale to ensure colorblind players didn't have to face a prompt relying on color, and making sure a motif (like a heart or a skull) was only used once per article of clothing (this was to prevent someone making a clue based on a motif and having the guessers need to pick between two options). 

As the game is meant for party scenarios, care was taken in presenting the instructions so that it didn't require too much ready but still got the point across. First step was reducing the tutorial sections to explaining the goal of the game instead of how to play. Next was including instructions in text boxes and buttons (example: adding the words "Fill in the Blank" in the question section told players what to do). Finally, I added context sensitive instructions that will either explain to the player some rules (example: if the player wrote an article of clothing as their clue, they would receive instructions saying to not write clothes) or some subtle prompts to attract the player to a location of the screen (example: if the player was stuck writing a clue, the "Change Outfit" button will pulse to encourage them to use an option to make it easier for them). 

Platform

Android - Google Play

Genre

Party Game

Dress-up Game

Engine

Unity Engine