NATURAL ELECTION

Pioneering AI Art in a Cooperative Simulation Game

Role — Lead UX/UI Designer, Artist

Duration — 3 months (Oct—Dec ‘23)

Engine — Svelte

Natural Election is a cooperative simulation game in which players must manage their budget and resources to effectively run a mayoral campaign and elect their team’s candidate. Actions are distributed across players in this round-based gameplay loop motivating them to communicate strategy, negotiate tradeoffs, and delegate frequently with one another.

Due to heavy time and art constraints, I decided to leverage Midjourney’s generative artificial intelligence program to create all art assets.

Game Design Inspiration

The original pitch was heavily inspired by The Politcal Machine 2016.

My Responsibilities

About

Research, design, and establish UX flow and patterns for a round-based game.
Establish a visionary approach and methodology for the creation of art and animation.
Low and high-fidelity design mocks for the entire gameplay loop.
Interactive prototypes to showcase unique features, flows, user actions, and animations.
Collaborate with game developers and stakeholders, present & review designs.
Various art and design assets including icons, characters, infographics, etc.
Conduct play tests with kids to evaluate and revise UX patterns and UI accessibility issues.
Create a style guide and asset repository for marketing content

I produced hundreds of designs, assets, and prototypes working on Natural Election. Below is just a fraction!

The gameplay loop is set on rails and serves as both a primary gameplay mechanic as well as a key strategy consideration for players. A set amount of time and actions are available for players at each stage of the loop, which subtly exercises each player’s skill in asking context-dependent questions, coordinating present and future actions, as well as predicting the strategies of other teams.

Gameplay Constraints

Early exploration of a real-time gameplay loop. Quickly discarded for the engineering cost.

Design decision: focus on highlighting the three high-level actions players can take at each stage.

Exploring a left-to-right flow. Players select their high-level action (in this case: advertising) and move from left-to-right to build their advertisement.

V1 of the spending results. Here players can see how other teams spent their actions and currency.

V1 of the leaderboard. Here players can see how their candidate is viewed in the eyes of the electorates. Teams can strategize which groups to woo next and which groups they've lost due to their actions.

Start →

Experimenting With Generative Tools

“Make it something a 21-year-old would think looks cool.”

— Head of Studio

Art Direction

I began explorations trying to create animal kingdom presidential candidates inspired by Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ character art. Upon discovering success using phrases such ‘comic book’ or ‘bold line art,’ the characters uncovered fit well with a UI inspired by Persona 5’s incredibly stylish UI.

Criteria For
Candidate Concept Art

easily recognizable
composition inspires confidence and pragmatism
NOT menacing
does NOT resemble existing politicians
minimal noise or editing requirements
contributes to a diverse cast of species, gender performance, and trendiness

Criteria For
Voter Concept Art

easily recognizable
clear at small and large sizes
generalized as to represent a group*

*Playtesting made it clear that Version 1 made quick identification almost impossible. Iterations inspired by pokemon cards were far more successful.

Final

Version 1

UI Visual Progression Inspired by Concept Art

8 Candidates Across 2 Biomes

→FINAL

ITERATE

TEST

ITERATE TEST

Experimentation

I explored a few art generation tools to understand the level of detail and consistency I could get using AI.

I found MidJourney to be best suited for this project thanks to the tool’s rapid iterations, quality, and affordability.

Workflow for Finalizing Art

Generate and manipulate variants until the asset is 70% of the way to our vision.
Remove and paint over any extra noise or oddities… such as human hands.
And finally color correct, crop, and place in context.