Little Clickers

Little clickers is a game that was initially brought to me while it was still being conceptualized, at this stage the idea was to have a game where the player would be able to buy different pets by earning coins from a timer which would lock the players’ phone away from them.

I began this project as a consultant designer giving Scott  (the creator of the concept) ideas on how to keep the player engaged with the product and how to retain players who download the game.
The initial change that I suggested was to change from having many pets to having a singular pet that the player could customize, this was so that players would feel more attached to their pet and would have a reason to keep using the app by giving other customisation options such as clothes and hats to their pet even after they bought the pet they most desired.
Furthermore, a suggestion I made was to give the player a way to interact with the pet, this was implemented as an affinity system that drains over time meaning that players who return can increase pet happiness greatly promoting player retention.

After helping Scott with refining his idea, he hired me as a developer for his game. During the development of the game, I realised that Scott had not previously used Unity and as such, I created documentation for him to better understand how to modify the project to his liking after I was no longer working with him. I also created tools such as the Pet Database Editor to make it easier for Scott to support the game for a long time by adding new pets, furniture and clothing options.

The ‘gameplay’ itself is very simple, you have a roaming pet which you can tap to increase its happiness, at different happiness levels the pet will ‘say’ its emotions to the player.
the pet can be customized through different options such as pet heads, and clothes, the pet’s room can also be customized with different animated backgrounds, and furniture items, all of which can be bought for in-game currency (coins).

Coins can be earnt in two different ways, firstly coins are earnt by using the timer to lock away phone use, if the player turns off their phone screen or exits the app, this timer is exited and the player receives no coins for the time they have spent. If the timer is completed players have a second way of earning coins; watching ads can double the coins that they earn from the timer.

Overall the project was a very interesting experience and I learned a lot of skills and tricks that I would otherwise not have known.

As of writing this page, the game is not yet available on google play or app stores.