Project overview

Monster's Mess is a match-3 puzzle game with strategic elements set in a dystopian fantasy world, where you can explore unique islands and battle against cute folklore creatures.

This academic project was part of the “Match-3” challenge. We needed to create a mobile Match-3 game that stood out from the big hits in the industry, like Candy Crush.

What was even more interesting is the collaboration with GameLoft Sofia: for the first time, we interfaced with a real company. I think this has motivated us even more in the realization of this project.

Our team was made of:

• 2 designers
• 3 programmers
• 2 3D artist
• 1 concept artist
• 1 producer

We had just over a month to complete the project.

There were difficulties during brainstorming, mainly due to the fact that match-3 games contain more or less the same mechanics. After several thoughts, we decided to mix the Adventure and RPG genres with match-3. This has led to excellent results.

The game alternates between two phases: Outpost and fight. The first is a hub for all the player's actions, for example, he can see information about the monsters he has found, improve it to unlock new islands, and so on. In the second, the player fights monsters to capture them and bring them to his village.

Monsters can only be found on islands and each of them has different abilities. They also have different rarities and consequently give different money based on it.

Since the target audience of mobile games is different from those for PC and consoles, we had to think of a solution to make the game fun for everyone and it is at this point that we thought about making the monsters cute, but inspired by folklore.

Unfortunately, we had little time so we had to rush to create the bare minimum for the project, but we structured it to make it infinitely scalable, which also means the project could be resumed at any time.

We have a single island with 3 types of monsters:

• Lagoon monster: A creature from the Black Lagoon.
• Loch Ness: A Scottish, large, long-necked creature that lives in the Scottish Highlands
• Kelpie: a shape-shifting spirit that lives in the waters.

We have also planned to add:

• LiveOps
• More monsters
• A PvP mode
• Customization of every aspect of the game.

Roles

In this project I worked as a UI/UX & Gameplay Designer, we had just over a month to complete the project.

My goal within the project was to encourage the player to play and eventually invest some money in the game. Obviously, the last point was implemented only in a theoretical way, since we had not put any payment system.

There are two currencies in the game: one soft and one hard. At each level, the game gives the player a limited amount of hard currency and a moderate amount of soft currency. Both are used to unlock outfits or skins for the player and his monsters.

Soft currency	Hard currency

I also found a solution to make the match-3 phase different from other games: the "cube" mechanic. Basically, instead of inverting one element with the other, the player can move the entire row or column, making the element that previously was at one edge appear on the opposite side of the grid.

The top row before any swipe	The top row after a swipe

Awards

All departments of our team have worked hard to be able to deliver a fun and satisfying product from all points of view. The efforts were worth it because we received the "Best Project" award. Each team member received a personal certificate.