Belka (card game)

Lost :(

Belka Online is a very popular card game in Kazakhstan, especially in central regions. Some even consider it to be a national Kazakh game. The goal of the game is to win a round in one of two ways: by scoring 12 or more points in a round, or by scoring 120 points in a deal

Overview

The Goal

The challenge

Revise and redesign the mobile game. Completely redesign the interface, change the user experience, add numerous new features, update visual components

The main focus was on changing the visual style of the game itself. The game had to have a new look and stand out significantly among competitors

Begining

Since the old version of the game was available in the app store, I was able to download it and understand the essence of the game by playing several rounds. In addition, the game developers replenished my account with gaming currency, so I could try out all its features

Having figured out the game, I moved on to researching competitors to emphasize interesting features that could be added to the new version of the game.

Prototyping

After discussing the results obtained at the stage of product and competitor analysis with the project owners and developers, I was able to proceed to the stage of creating prototypes

The result of the prototyping stage was interactive prototypes that the team was able to test. After several iterations, we brought the prototypes to the desired result. Many changes and updates were made to the existing project logic, as well as many new elements were added. The main changes were made to the in-game store, user account, and the main screen of the mobile game. A huge amount of new functionality of different levels was added, such as player progress, achievements, tournaments, etc.

UI Design

This stage has become the most difficult stage of the entire work on this freelance

My suggestion was to try to make the design in a modern minimalist style. Unfortunately, we could not come to a unanimous decision regarding the style of the future game. The project owners did not have a clear idea of how they envision their game, so it was suggested to make test screens in different styles.

I selected several references of mobile games in various styles, which we then discussed

The initial design attempt

The next version of it

The third design iteration

The fourth design iteration

The design iteration number five

On this iteration, the client decided to stop and see how the other screens of the mobile game will look like. It was a critical decision that allowed the client to visualize the final product and decide which direction to take. This step was necessary to ensure that the client was satisfied with the overall game design before proceeding to other screens

I proposed attempting a minimalist design approach anyway.

After trying this style on several more screens, we decided to discard this. We realized that this particular style was not intuitive or easy to navigate, and it was distracting from the main purpose of the screen.

The design iteration number six

Everyone liked the last version of the design, which made the team enthusiastic to continue making the game in the same chosen style. Product owners now saw the potential for the game with the new design, and they agreed to continue making the rest of the game in the same style to provide a unique gaming experience.

At the client's request, some interface details were thoroughly designed taking into account the future game development. For example, such details as the game table. For the first version of the game, it was planned to create two types of game table design, but in the end, we worked on all types of tables that were planned for the future.