Sadie’s Tail
In-Depth Design

A Semester Long Project

Sadie’s Tail is an interactive mobile narrative game that follows the life of a dog. You play as Sadie the dog, making decisions from being a puppy to adulthood. Sadie’s Tail is a story about unconditional love. Sadie’s Tail is right now built for Android and was developed by two MFA Candidates (Francesca Palamara and Hesiquio Mendez Alejo) from the Interactive Media and Games program at the University of Southern California.

Target Audience

We wanted to reach children 7-10 years of age. We wanted to use this a tool that could also be used to learn some social cues. Similar to what the puppy goes through in the game.

Concentric Design

“Concentric development means to develop the game concentrically, starting at the center of the game’s design, and work outwards to the thing that surrounds and support that center” - Richard Lemarchand (Designer and professor for this project).

I paired up with a friend and classmate, Frenchie. We were both designers, Frenchie wanted to practice her 2D drawing, and I wanted to keep developing my programming skills. From the very beginning, we knew we wanted to give the emotional design a try. We saw emotional design as the ability to create engagement by emotional attachment to the experience. We wanted to experiment with this idea because we think it might be helpful for future projects. First, we started with a mood board and related films and games for reference.

We chose to create a mobile game. We decided this with the intention of the game being approachable, accessible, and easy/familiar to use. We wanted the experience to be a quick, small, enjoyable story.  I think that the variety of gestures that we have in a touch screen is quite diverse with simple input. We chose to have a limited amount of gestures.

For scope reasons we chose sliding, tapping, and tap&hold. Tapping is a familiar gesture that we wanted to keep a similar impact to point and click games. We allowed for exploration and curiosity in our small experience where people enjoy the short but satisfying feedback with sound, particles, and bouncing objects. I find it quite interesting that we are still using operant conditioning, where we wanted to give positive reinforcement for exploring and tapping. I also wanted to show a close relation to how dogs are trained with positive(pawsitive) reinforcement. 

I highly enjoyed developing concentrically. The concentric design focuses on reaching every milestone with a reliable deliverable. The game should not break as much, and if it does, the idea can still get across to the players. The process allowed us to create the journey clear for the players, and if we stop at any moment, the player should not feel like it is way too off from what we think the experience might be.

Project Macro

The project macro describes the desired player behavior in each beat of the story. The macro also helps us to keep check of what emotions we need to evoke each step of the way and how to design around the desired experience.

My Role as a Designer and ENGINEER

After each iteration, we would playtest, evaluate, and change the design if needed. Frenchie and I often discussed and compared notes from our playtest and talk about the changes that needed to be done mechanically and visually.

Use of particles : I wanted to show the dogs perspective of smell. I design some particles that functioned as smell.

Design part of the feedback system: We knew we needed various ways to show feedback. I programmed the bouncing system when things are tapped, as well as the heart particle system to show love from the people.

I was also the sound designer for the project. I recorded and edited sounds that would signify certain moods for the dog and for the humans.

As an engineer, I implemented the input system, created a shader for the static images to not be too stiff. implemented sounds, developed particle effects, coded in the UI elements of the game.

Final product