Spell Scribe

2019

Spell Scribe is a cursive writing educational game in the style of a topdown 2D tower defense, where players must defend their library from invading monsters! Players utilize a stylus to write a spell word to cast it at an approaching enemy. As players defeat foes, they acquire new spells as they journey through their library vanquishing all evil. The ability to read and write cursive is getting taught less and less, while it remains a valuable skill to possess. Children of our targeted audience often have their own or at least access to a tablet in the modern family’s household. Gamification is a great way to keep this skill alive and being educated. This was 1 of 9, among 16 total projects, presented to and selected by Bradley University to be funded and be presented at the annual FUSE event in 2019; which showcases Bradley’s Interactive Media Department student work, in the regional museum whose target audience was 8 - 12 year olds. The event was attended by over 1500 people.

Student Project

Project Role: User Experience / User Interface Designer

Team Size: 11

Platform: Tablets & Mobile

Engine & Tools: Unity · Adobe Creative Suite

Date: September 2018 - April 2019 (sophomore year)

This project was intended to be a VR game where players would use their controller as a wand to draw spell icons mid-air and cast them at enemies attacking their castle. However, while the concept of our game was greenlit, the platform it was on was not, as there were not enough VR kits in the department to support us fully.

While deciding what avenue to explore with our concept, I had a realization that we could turn this into a cursive educational game on tablets and presented it to the team with crude mockups in a notebook.

Children are our target audience most often have access to a tablet of some sort, and using a stylus, we simulate writing as much as possible. The idea of gamification for cursive writing was well taken to and was the new direction of the project.

As a user experience and interface designer, I contributed to creating UI assets and finalizing cursive gamification.