ChromaCorp
Team project, System Designer, Programmer
ChromaCorp is an Indiecade Award winning project. I worked as a system designer and programmer.
ChromaCorp is a immersive experience where players work for a dystopic company. Players walk into a physical cubicle and work (play mini games) for the megacorporation. This page looks at how the user experience evolved through iteration.
In this early version of the extraction game each color is extracted separately broken down into red, green, and blue (purple would yield red and blue). The player would move their mouse cursor over the color and would mash a button to drain the color from that segment. Draining a color would fill the corresponding gauges at the bottom of the screen and the goal was to fill all the gauges before the company gave you another mini game task.
The later versions of the color extraction game changed the extraction method to extract the entire image at once and simplified the quota system by converting it into a meter that depletes over time. In order to extract a color players have to input a code found on a physical folder which then prompts the folder to show up in game. This made the game interface diegetic with the physical space in front of the player increasing their immersion.
Understanding the User Experience
Chromacorp is a one of a kind experience that utilizes custom controllers and physical space to enhance immersion and narrative. The experience is built for a general audience and is only 15 minutes including tutorial. This requires the custom controllers and UI to clearly communicate their function to new users and proved to be the area in which the experience saw the most iteration. To highlight the process I’ll look at the extraction mini game.
Extraction Mini Game Summary
Chromacorp is a company that is extracting colors from the dreams of children to sell back to the world. Player’s are new hires at Chromacorp and learn this nefarious truth. To avoid being punished players must maintain their productivity by draining color from the children’s dreams.
After playtesting we decided to make one mini game more robust rather than have 3 simple mini games. To keep extraction game engaging the complexity was increased by adding a quota system. At this point our custom controller had 4 buttons and a joystick. The red green and blue bars at the bottom of the screen fill up as colors are extracted. When the bars at the bottom were full the player had to hit a corresponding button on their controller to submit that color to their quota on the right side of the screen.