Overview

As lead designer at F84, I had the opportunity to work on two different HTML5 activities for the Play Disney Parks app.

The Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Day

‘The Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Day’ was created to entertain Walt Disney World guests while waiting in line at Splash Mountain.

The game is a minigame collection wrapped in an adventure game shell. The guest is introduced to the world of Splash Mountain, where a variety of woodland critters are having problems. Ma Cat’s kids are stuck in a tree. The Singing Bullfrogs are missing their singer. Across the woodlands, 16 different critters need the guest’s help. To solve their problems, the guest must play each critters minigame. Playing minigames will earn them an item that they can give to another critter to help solve their specific problem.

The minigames are designed with a party-centric focus. Players can choose a single player option, but the game is intended to be experienced with a group. Several games involve two players using the same device at once. Other games are ‘pass-and-play’, meaning once one player completes a portion of the game, they pass the device to the next player in the group.

The games content is intended to provide three hours of entertainment. The goal was to keep a group of guests entertained during even the longest queue hours of the summer.

The game was created using Phaser 2.6.2. It was written in TypeScript instead of JavaScript in order to leverage static type checking and provide a cleaner codebase.

Kidcot Puzzle Hunt

THe Kidcot Puzzle Hunt was a walking tour to lead guests to the Kidcot Fun Stops at each pavilion in Epcot.

Guests could select which pavilion they were at and then follow a set of clues to lead them to the Fun Stop. Along they way they would be presented with fun facts about the pavilion or the country it’s associated with.

Once at the Fun Stop, guests could use their device’s camera to scan a physical puzzle piece. Scanning the puzzle piece would complete their walking tour and reward them with a jigsaw puzzle.

My Role

As lead designer on both projects, I did the following:

• Wrote and maintained GDD’s based off high concepts provided by Disney
• Designed minigames that matched the feel of Splash Mountain and the characters provided
• Determined the characters problems and the item solutions for each one
• Wrote the dialog for every character
• Identified all geographical markers for each pavilion & wrote their associated clue
• Lead internal build reviews within the studio
• Lead build reviews with our Disney team
• Lead demos for key stakeholders behind the project
• Participated in R&D at Walt Disney World
• Participated in Focus Testing at Walt Disney World

Additionally, I operated as the chief contact with the Play Disney Parks tech team. The game integrated the Play API in order to function within the app. It allowed our game to access native platform functionality such as the camera while also integrating Play specific features such as Player Management, Achievements, and more. To achieve this integration I assisted with the following:

• Worked with individual team members to understand requirements and implementation details for specific features
• Communicated bugs & feature requests via Slack
• Provided test scenarios for reproducing issues within the Play API
• Delivered builds for dev, stage, and production