Hero Image features a character from Love is Rising -- image shows a girl with a visor and apron holding onto a bag of bread whilst in motion. Whole image is rendered in a painterly, soft way.

Love is Rising: Sketch and Production

Character Illustration, Product Design
Love is Rising is a dating simulator/deck-building card game in production for mobile devices. The unique features of this game include the combination of features from card games and visual novels.
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Objective
Building the framework for the dialogue to card-playing transition.
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Long-term goal
Making a fully-functional game that utilizes the screens/ideas derived from the screens created in this project.
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Role
I led the research and designed the prototypes.
Overview
Scope      Interaction and Design
Platform iOS
I conducted studies on different games in two genres: visual novel/dating sim and deck-builder. My points of focus were how they laid out their interfaces and how space was being utilized on landscape layouts.
Research
A screenshot from the game Hatoful Boyfriend. Shows Yuuya, a pigeon, talking to the player. He says, "I know everybirdie here. Besides, you're the only human. A single poppy in a field of rye."
Visual Novels (VNs) primarily feature character sprites and dialogue boxes. Extras include day, chapter, stats, and decorative elements. (Sources: Hatoful Boyfriend, Danganronpa, 999: 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors)
Card Games (CGs) feature card hands, player characters, mana/action points, draw piles, discarded cards, and health points. Extras include decorative environmental elements and artifacts.
(Sources: Slay the Spire, Hearthstone, Magic the Gathering Arena)
My main takeaway from this research was that due to the way in which visual novels and card games are organized, some of their most important elements lie within the bottom of the screen (dialogue box, card hand). On top of that, both game genres feature their own unique screen elements.
The question now is: how do you combine all of these elements into one screen?
With a unique mashup of genres like Love is Rising has comes challenges on how to integrate them into one coherent product.

From here, I decided to focus on designing screens that could represent what Love is Rising will look like. These findings led to me to the following opportunities:
How might we effectively translate a typically landscape-framed medium into a portrait frame?
How might we blend card games and visual novels together to form a seamless new experience?
How might we use a mobile phone screen to its fullest potential with the required elements that need to be implemented?
Map
Below is an overview of the experience as it stands in the present concept, identifying the step of playing more cards to unlock more playable answers as the focus for this test because this step of integrating card game and visual novel mechanics into one screen felt like what would pose the biggest challenge and the most interesting ideas.
I focused on how we could blend card games and visual novels together to form a seamless new experience because as stated above the map, this whole project is teeming with interesting challenges that require creative solutions. This solution led me to sketching out how to incorporate everything that was necessary onto a mobile screen.
8 low-fidelity sketch ideas. I considered different screens for search options.
Two potential solutions and looks for the screen I was focusing on.
Exploring Solutions
After choosing a direction, I set out to more explicitly define design goals and success criteria:
The screen users value more will have better-organized information and icons.
The screen users value more will help users obtain key information quickly from the elements on the screen.
Users will find both screen easy-to-understand after prompted and will find the information they need easily.
Storyboard
Our user’s journey began with a user looking to interact with a character in-game and ended with the user being satisfied with the process of the interaction and how to get there. Other important moments included: 

1. The cards played in the card-playing portion affecting the availability of answers that can be selected
2. Being able to perceive necessary elements to unlock certain answers 

(Note: This storyboard shows only one of the two solutions I prototyped, but their functionality is the same. The core difference between the two solutions is information organization and layout changes.)
Highlight 1: 
Players unlock choices by playing cards with corresponding types
Highlight 2:
Unlocked answers lead to more interesting character interactions
Prototyping a
Successful Solution
Prototyping a
Successful Solution
Prototype
I generated a realistic prototype to bring our solution to life and get high-quality feedback from users with Figma. Because this portion of the project focuses on picking a specific layout for transitioning between dialogue to card-playing, the prototype has very limited screens. This is because we wanted the users to focus on a specific screen and did not want them focused on other elements of the game (yet).
Starting screen: Player gets into dialogue with character. Layout resembles traditional visual novel/dating sim.
Both screens feature the same information, but laid out differently. This is the screen we are hoping to test with play testers soon. Combines visual novel/dating sim and card game elements.
Screens feature a more card game-like element, allowing users to pull folders from the sides of the screen to view draw pile, storage, discarded cards, and played cards.
We are in the next stage of producing screens and finding play testers, so information on user testing & evaluations will be coming soon!
User Testing & Evaluating

Key Takeaways

Coming soon after user testing!
Key Idea # 1 coming soon
Findings coming soon.
Key Idea #2 coming soon
Findings coming soon.
Key Idea #3 coming soon
Findings coming soon.