The concept
Created an Election-themed Flappy Bird clone for iOS & Android (back when we could joke about the Election and not be 😥.)
It started when a group of us designers, developers and product managers were asked by our owner to explore some "fun" approaches to the news. A lot of us being gamers, we gravitated toward the idea of gamifying the news in some way. Thus, the idea for "Floppy Candidate" was born.
Creating the Environment
We talked a lot about how best to create the style of the app. While we were having these conversations the election had started turning into a spectacle; this was a few months before the caucuses when all the candidates were doing wild things to get noticed. We all gravitated toward the idea of doing something in 8-bit – and sometimes, "fake"-bit, to capture the true absurdity that started to take place. I created the buildings, obstacles and scenery in this 8-bit style and the app started to take shape. I created assets quickly in Sketch, prototyped them in a variety of ways including Keynote, Pixate and After Effects, and worked with an agile team to drop them in Testflight builds rapidly.
The emoji
One of my fellow designers had already started creating emoji heads for a separate project, and we realized this was a perfect fit to spotlight those within the app. Play as your favorite candidate!
We knew if the game mechanics weren't actually fun to play, no one would play it.
So that's why we included a range of absurd powerups, witty quiz questions and audio from each candidate. We regularly played the game and kept an internal high score throughout development to make sure we were creating something people would want to play, share and revel in the goofy fun that is Floppy.
Adding on
After release, we followed up with new levels and additional unlockable content to keep the experience fresh and new. I particularly liked making the 8-bit Iowa State Fair Butter Cow and the Lebron billboard.
