Moshi Monsters: Moshlings Theme Park

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Project Info

With the success of the Moshi Monsters: Moshling Zoo DS title, Mind Candy / Activision decided to double down with a sequel as a dual-release on the DS and 3DS. I worked as part of the co-development team for the DS title, which also lead the overall game direction approach for both platforms (the 3DS version was largely a visual overhaul to take advantage of the hardware capabilities of that platform).

This game was much larger in scope than Moshling Zoo and required many different approaches to presenting info to the player and also assuring that content was age-appropriate for the targeted younger audiences.

ABOVE: The starting screen for Moshlings Theme Park which mirrors the minimalist startup of the previous Moshling Zoo game.

BELOW: A sampling of various screens and interfaces I design — Moshi is such a colorful franchise and so I used its direction to inform various interface elements, color palettes, etc. while still preserving as much space as possible for stylus interactions and younger audience motor skills.

I directly contributed to all level, puzzle, and UI designs for the DS release while also supervising a small team of scripters. There were a larger number of assets and game elements comparative to Moshling Zoo, so planning and clear communication were critical. I was also responsible for communicating my designs to the 3DS development team so they could properly transmute the functionality and flow requirements through their parallel pipeline and reviewing work to ensure coherency between the two platforms. Additionally, I assisted with some animation work on the DS using Nintendo’s proprietary toolset.

ABOVE: A sample of the various design / planning spreadsheets used to keep track of content being developed. This specific sheet was used to keep track of the instances where specific tool interactions were required to complete challenges within a level; tools were unlocked progressively in the game and I wanted to make sure players had a decent spread of usage instances to keep gameplay fresh.

BELOW: Two example levels with their associated graybox layouts. Graybox design was done in Adobe Illustrator, aligned precisely to a grid as the final assets would be comprised of uniform sprite tiles. This graybox level was then used as a backdrop template for placing the final assets in a custom scene editor.

ABOVE: Screenshots from the screen layout and level setup processes using a custom IDE designed for the DS. Localized text linkage, sprite placement, and scripting were all done within this authoring environment.

It was fun to be able to follow up the initial success of Moshling Zoo with an even larger scope project that allowed us to build on some of the gameplay from the prior entry. Moshlings Theme Park is another title that I can claim to be part of the development of from start to finish and it was rewarding to see its positive reception by the Moshi fanbase (and kids in general).