In 2024 while at Hipster Whale we developed a port of "Crossy Road Castle" for consoles (PS5, Xbox Series S and X, and Switch). Our goal was to release the console version as a full package, including all the features and updates that had been added to the Apple Arcade version over the last four years as well as a revamped online multiplayer experience (with crossplay included).
This was a significant release so we used it as an opportunity to give the UX and UI of the game a major revision and make the game experience feel like it was designed with consoles in mind.
Over the project I worked closely with creative leads, designers and developers to design and iterate on wireframes, mockups and assets to translate a mobile-first experience into one that felt more natural on consoles.
This involved designing an entirely new UX flow and menu structure as well as major revisions to the UI art style, we also saw this as a chance to solve any usability issues that had arisen in the original game due to years of updates and additional features.
One particular challenge was redesigning the character and hats select experience. When the original game launched in 2020 the character select experience was designed for touch-screens with only a few characters to choose from. Since then the number of characters and hats to choose from had grown significantly, so I had to work out a suitable way for players to browse from over 60 characters and over 100 hats in a way that worked well with a controller. This also had to work with four players at the same time, that's a lot of information to present on the one screen but we managed to come up with an elegant solution that felt fun and arcade-y.
We put a lot of work into this version to make sure it didn't feel like "just a port", and in 2024 we released a feature rich console-first experience that we are very proud of.
