Kinect Adventures

Kinect Adventures! is a full-featured Kinect game where you and your friends will explore the world – and beyond – through 20 active adventures to achieve the ultimate reward: Expert Adventurer status! Jump, duck and dodge your way through roaring rapids and challenging obstacle courses. Use your skills to save a leaky underwater laboratory. Get creative by showing off and sharing your accomplishments online with Photo Moments and Living Statues. The spirit of adventure awaits!

For Kinect Adventures, my role was UI artist. I worked closely with the UI lead and art director to maintain the look and feel of the game. I created the game and UI art in Photoshop and Illustrator. UI elements we then brought into Macromedia Flash and integrated into the Unreal Engine. Also, I worked on the interaction out of box experience sequence to teach users how to properly use the Kinect in their homes.

Working on Kinect Adventures UI was super fun. Making the art for the game was always a fun conversation about how should each of the elements of UI look and feel. Since the game revolved around adventure, the art director wanted the UI to feel like you were a scout collecting your hard earned patches after each challenge.

Visually, it was a hard challenge to be able to replicate the hand stitched look. I worked closely with the UI lead to find references for patch work and high quality stitch art. We scanned different types of materials to find a quick way to make the hand made feel digitally. I worked with our concept artist to create the UI art. One key contribution I made on the visual team was creating a Photoshop layer styles and using a Wacom Cintiq to create a fast process to make the patches. One of the fun parts about working on a game is you get to put yourself in the game. 

Now, that the user was the controller, we needed a way to pause and/or access the Xbox guide. The interaction model was this reserve gesture. I worked with the game designer to create an easy to digest tutorial before you started the game. Once, the user did the gesture correctly, they were prompted on how to find the proper play space area in their homes.

This wireframe that I created helped inform the proper on screen elements we need to represent each user's play space for calibration. Once, this was approved, I continued to develop the look with the UI lead to create the final shipped product. We decided a top down view was the optimal viewing angle for users to understand the bounds of their space. It was also designed to help with a multiplayer scenario.

Color was used as feedback to show proper play space use. If users were too close their avatar turned red. Once the optimal distance and space was achieved the avatar turned green and a checkmark hydrated in.

Also, I worked heavily on the game UI animations. Above was a prototype for the race indicator to show who was winning during a race. I would work on several prototypes to eventually find the final shipped UI look and animation.

Kinect Adventures shipped with the Kinect and was a game that taught users how to interact with the Kinect. Below are the total number of units the game sold globally.

Total Units

North America:14.78m

+ Europe:4.87m

+ Japan:0.24m

+ Rest of the World:1.64m

= Global 21.52m