Ghostdoku
Design Assembly recently interviewed Communications Design graduate Hina Macmaster.
My graduating project was Ghostdoku, a 2D mobile game which combines story with puzzle. The player traverses a crumbling graveyard and helps ghosts remember their pasts by playing sudoku. I worked in a team to achieve this project. We wanted to create a peaceful experience for the player, getting them to use their brain during the sudoku and then be rewarded with ghosts’ stories. We didn’t get as far as we wanted when the first semester project ended but I’m glad we had the opportunity to continue it for the rest of the year and get it to a point we could be proud of.
I always knew I wanted to pursue something creative but I hadn’t anticipated that I’d want to do game design, so there wasn’t exactly anyone or anything that got me into it. Working on a couple of great projects through my course and an internship sparked a passion for creating games and inspired me to continue with it and develop my skills. In terms of creative inspirations, almost every piece of media that I’ve liked has inspired me to keep pursuing creativity and the joy making things gives me.
Ghostdoku is definitely a piece I am proud of. My teammates and I spent all of our final year working on it and I’m very pleased with the communication and work we all put in to get it to where it is now. I worked on the character designs and animations during this project, and I made sure that the characters were all visually cohesive while also showing the individuality of each of them. Working on these characters was a lot of fun and I get a lot of enjoyment out of seeing them move and interact with one another once everything has been implemented.