PIXEL : The Game


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Identity, Game concept

team Stefanie Suk, Designer
“It takes forever to go up and down.” 
“Unless I have a class in the Helix, I try to avoid using it.” 


The Helix is an iconic walkway nestled in the Computer Science building on the Carnegie Mellon University campus. Although iconic, both students and professors prefer taking the stairs and elevators, because walking through the Helix can be time consuming and boring. 

What if travelling through the Helix could be gamefied - an experience with competing teams, motion-tracking, and cute pixel art? Our team of 2 developed Pixel: a game concept that engages the computer science community at CMU and encourages our players to walk the longer path to class.












What it looks like to walk throught the Helix:

Photo that shows the large scale of the Helix:





Understanding the helixStefanie and I did an initial survey of the building: measuring the width of the walkway, timing how long it took to walk its entire length, and even observing the noise levels coming from the first floor cafe.
We didn’t want to force our experience into the space: we knew we wanted to take advantage of the unique physical parameters and let our design become a part of it.
















Brainstorming engagementTo attract people to the helix, we brainstormed ways on how we can motivate someone to use it. Can our audience win some sort of prize or accumulate some sort of streak? Can this experience be done over and over again without feeling too repetitive? 
This lead to the idea where, maybe, the act of walking through the helix is the reward itself. 

We began to build an end-to-end journey: what a player will see when they first reach the helix entrance, how their trip through the helix is recorded and tallied, and finally, how this experience can create its own community in this shared space.






















Prototyping our visionTo demonstrate our vision, we built a set of assets for different stages of the player experience: we mocked up the size and scale of the onboarding kiosks, designed mobile screens for our Pixel app, and made pixel animations to demo how our digital avatars can move alongside the player.
We even included additional features. For example, the more the player walks through the helix, the more the game environment will slowly populate with new plants, creatures, and buildings (some even hinting at landmarks around the university campus).

























Project takeawaysPaint a picture with our designs.

While there were numerous more assets we could build out, we had limited time to complete the work. This project ended up being a great exercise to help us narrow our scope and develop only the key visuals that will sell and provide clarity to our game experience.Committing to the pixel style.

I want to widen my repertoire of design styles and used this opportunity to explore pixel graphics. A fun part of this project was finding different ways to apply the pixel art style to our assets. For example, we spent a long time finding pixel fonts that had character and would still be legible. We also borrowed some of the pixel type to develop decorative pieces like pixel animals and plants that we later animated.





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