iPhony began as an experiment to create a parody of smartphone and social media culture. The game became a collection of rapid microgames  to reflect the frantic, and fast paced nature of social media.

Engine: Actionscript

Team Size: 6 members: 2 designers, 2 artists, and two programmers

Project Length: 8 months

As a design lead on the project, I was in charge of concepting the many games that would eventually be implemented. This meant both creating games that functioned similarly to their real-life counterparts, as well as abstracting the gameplay in some cases when a certain app might not have translated into meaningful gameplay otherwise.

I designed all  the apps and games in iPhony  to parody their real life counterparts. Some of the first games created were based on Instagram and Facebook. iPhony is meant to look and feel like an iPhone, and I spent a lot of development time studying the different interface elements. . We used elements like the service indicator and battery life as time left in a game and the player's lives remaining respectively.

One of the most important elements of the game is the prompt system. This system informs the player of the aim of the current microgame. This system presents a prompt to the player that explains the goal of the game in simple language. That way the player can grasp the game within a second or so. It was my job to make sure that these prompts accomplished this. Most of them went through several revisions before we settled on the final structure and vocabulary. Through testing we learned that by highlighting the actions the player would perform in the game, that the message would be even clearer. For example "  TAP to like the POSTS" was used because it highlights the objective of the game clearly.

iPhony's achievement system is integral to progression through the game. Each time the player earns an achievement, they are rewarded with a certain amount of points or 'iBux'. The player can spend these points to add new games to their collection. It was important to us that these achievements feel meaningful. To do this, we ensured that the payer could complete them through less traditional means. For example, the player can earn the "Vegetarian" achievement if they put only vegetable toppings on in the Pizza Pal microgame.