Passos
Game Designer - Graphic Designer - Producer
Developed by: Marcel Pace, Vinicius Graett
Platform: Android
Developed on: Unity
Developed for: PBMIH
Passos is an educational game made for refugees who seek to learn Brazilian Portuguese.
It was developed for the PBMIH (Brazilian Portuguese for Humanitarian Migration), which is associated with UFPR (Federal University of Paraná) and UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).
Gameplay video
The Process
The first phase of the project consisted of a functional software in which a minigame could be accessed, and the first minigame.
Each minigame is related to the topics of PBMIH's in-house language course, following the same teaching methodology.
We started the project defining how the software should be:
Screenflow
Then I developed a visual identity, using a split complementary color scheme, using blue and it's analogous colors for the game and yellow for the interface.
Blue analogous colors
Blue complementary color
Icon
Dark and light background logo
The game bar, containing the remaining time, score, and in-game menu button.
One of the features requested was a sharing button with Facebook, so we decided that the game should have a cumulative score system.
Every minigame has a limited amount of time, and if you manage to finish it before the time runs out, that same amount adds to your score in the next play.
Each minigame has some variance inside itself and can be played endlessly or until time runs out. That would foster a healthy competition between students and justifies the sharing feature.
The minigames were iteratively conceived. We brainstormed several design ideas considering fun, scope and feasibility. Then we picked the best ideas to present to the PBMIH team, where they chose the best ones, reviewed and gave insights considering their expertise in linguistics and pedagogy.
This dialog happened several times during development, and after some consideration PBMIH decided which minigame should be developed.
Three minigame concepts
The first minigame would be a matching game of images and words.
The theme here is cultural Brazilian dishes and their ingredients.
There was a huge challenge here since the icons needed to be understandable by image only, and for a target audience that can be complete strangers to some of the ingredients. (Although some refugees in Brazil are from Venezuela and other South American countries, the majority is from Syria and Haiti, with a very different culture and food.)
First minigame screen
For this minigame, there was a set of five dishes that would randomly appear to the player. Each dish also has three variances in the position of the icons and the words, so it could hance engagement through the play.
For each of the five dishes five icons were designed.
Some of them were very easy to design and to be understandable, but some posed as a challenge. PBMIH was also a huge help here, as they conducted themselves informal researches with the students.
Condensed milk was perhaps the most challenging of them:
1st attempt
2nd attempt
3rd attempt
4th attempt
5th: Complete redesign
6th attempt
When all icons where ready, we then conducted a formal research in-loco with the students:
All icons that were poorly understandable by the students went through a final redesign:
All dishes in the minigame:
And some other screens:
Apart from the music and interface sound, all sounds are spoken words, in order to improve the learning of the language.
For the first minigame, I listed all the necessary words and the PBMIH team offered themselves to record the audio, following some guidelines of their Phonetics research. Then I mixed, cut and implemented the audio files, such as:
Condensed Milk
Leite Condensado
Beans
Feijão
Milk
Leite
Bacon
Lemon
Limão
Sausage
Linguiça
