Her Little Mind
A serious game about emotions, feelings, and emotional development
Her Little Mind is a serious game that playfully teaches young people how emotions can arise, influence each other, and hate can arise. The project was created as part of my studies in the Game Art and Design program at the Serious Games seminar at HBK Essen and combines hand-drawn 2D graphics with playful learning.
Project description
A game that makes emotional connections visible
Emotions are often difficult to grasp, especially for developing young people. Her Little Mind makes feelings visible and understandable. The players accompany a young girl through her inner world of thoughts and experience how different emotions interact with each other.
The focus is on so-called moodlings, small emotional beings that represent different feelings. Depending on which emotions are combined, new feelings arise, and ultimately hatred can develop from them. This allows players to learn through play how emotions arise and what effects they can have.
My tasks
My role in the project
During development, I was responsible for, among other things:
- Game Design & Gameplay Concept
- UI design, logo & visual design
- Storytelling
- Level design
Gameplay
Discover and combine emotions
The players control a character, a young girl, through an abstract world of thought. Various moodlings can be attracted using a colored flame.
The basic emotions of fear, love, and anger spawn to fit the section of the story and can combine if one does not react quickly enough. This gives rise to the emotions of anger, jealousy, and disgust. When these new emotions combine, hatred arises. Depending on how much hate arises during the course of the game, this leads to different endings.
Development
From idea to playable prototype
The project was created in a team of three. The starting point was the question of how emotional development can be conveyed through play. Our given topic was „hate“.
Through several iterations, gameplay, level design and emotion system were further developed and improved through literature research and play tests. The result is a working prototype that combines serious games with artistic design.
Conclusion
Learn how to deal with emotions through play
Her Little Mind shows how games can convey complex topics such as feelings and emotional development in an understandable way. The project combines game design, illustration and interactive mechanics into a playful learning experience and highlights the potential of serious games in education.
