the Wind and the wisp

3D alt control adventure game

Technical Designer
Technical Art

30+ members
5 teams

Role
-

Team
-

1 year
2024-25

Timeline
-

Tools
-

Unity (C#)
Photoshop

Through the combination of traditional input methods and blowing into the microphone, control the Wisp, a little white ghost with a red ribbon, and the Wind, a non-corporeal petal breeze, on their journey to repair a mysterious broken garden. The pair adventure and collect flowers that have unique mechanics that can be activated by the blowing mechanic and use them to repair the broken garden one flower at a time.

Directed by Sammy Chuang, Design team led by Bernice Wang
https://www.thewindandthewisp.com/

Timeline
Team
Role
Tool

1 year (2024-25)
30+ members, 5 teams
Technical Designer, Technical Artist
Unity (C#), Photoshop

Play on Steam ↗

Problems

Players often don’t immediately internalize that they ARE the wind. They see blowing as a tool, not an identity.

Tasks and design goal:

My design tasks are about the wind interaction (player blowing into the microphone and creating wind):

Fast prototype wind interaction, implement and iterate on the wind feature in collaboration with engineering and art.
Design the gamefeel (the look and interaction feedback of wind output), making people feel like the wind.

How can the 3Cs inform player as the Wind alonside the Wisp, and guide the interaction design?

Concpeting

Wind playground and engine prototypes

Prototypes

Wind has emotions

Pat-pat wind:
Wind as reward

Hide-and-seek wind:
Wind as hint feature

Wind can inform level specific mechanics

Wind’s power in different ways
(They can help, can mess up, like real friends)

Wind’s all-time presence

Wind has momentum

Lock down core wind types, iterate on features, and add gamefeel

Playtest & Iteration

Production: Playtest tracker made by Sammy Chuang

Development Process

Global wind: Wind as present around Wisp all the time. Blowing feels like an outward motion, so we added a vignette and pushed the camera out a little.

Hide-and-seek wind: Wind as hint feature that leads to POI (eg. A swing set)