Expand pizza town!
Expand pizza town!
Richard Pizza's Hungry Games: a town jam-packed with goofy characters and mini games!
Richard Pizza's Hungry Games: a town jam-packed with goofy characters and mini games!
👯♀️ TEAM
Lead
PROGRAMMING, GAME DESIGN
Art & Animation
Eric Monachello, Nick Paparazzo & Me!
Music & SOUND
Promotional video for the game’s launch on iOS and Android!
Production
Richard Pizza’s Hungry Games is a series of minigames designed around unlocking buildings and characters, to flesh out Pizza Town. The main character is the mayor of Pizza Town, Richard Pizza. He needs your help to spur economic growth and development.
My main roles on this project were:
- Designing additional character art (after the initial visual style was developed by Nick Paparazzo)
- Updating old card art
- Creating new game assets such as backgrounds, props and UI
- Running and growing the social media accounts to boost player count and engagement
- QA testing app builds
Screenshot of the game – this is the main shop (with art by me), where players can visit Olly the Olive to collect new cards, test their luck at the prize machine, or purchase gems from the store shelves.
An assortment of really good lads that you could collect in the game. These were our special holiday-themed characters.
I ran the Richard Pizza Instagram page daily, posting new characters, updates, and various other promotional material. This was a very interesting learning experience for me – I got to delve into things from a marketing and SEO perspective, seeing what worked and what didn’t. What hashtags got the most views, what times got the most engagement? 💭
We also had a Twitter and Facebook page, and I briefly tried using Tumblr as well.
In addition to creating new art assets, I also updated some of the old art as well, posting on our social channels to generate hype and interest in the game’s updates.
Richard Pizza... 2?
After launching the game and getting a modest following, we had some ideas for a sequel. The first game was a lot of fun to work on, but through test builds and focus groups, I played around with a bunch of ideas I had to improve on the game’s framework.
Dialing in on the collection aspect, I tapped into a player’s desire for customization. I developed a new main town screen, with a rotating 2D world (inspired a bit by Super Mario Galaxy). The player could customize their main player character (in this example, Mr. Banana) based on their preferences and what they have unlocked through minigames. I also had ideas for costume customization as well. 🍌
In addition to the fun rotating environment, the bottom sticky nav would still be user-friendly and provide for quick access to game features.
We brought our game to local conventions, like PixelFest in Norfolk, VA.
We never had the bandwidth to continue production after some initial interest and a few in-game holiday events.
Unfortunately, the game is no longer downloadable, but I maintain that it was one of the more fun and varied projects I had got to work on for IDSI. 💃 The many disciplines I got to explore because of Richard Pizza’s Hungry Games helped round me out as a designer and general content creator. I now really enjoy the game-development and marketing processes!