Early Wireframe Concepts
Returner Zhero: Communicating a Game Universe
Fantastic, Yes hired me on a project basis to sort out their web, advertisement and video production. As part of this I designed and implemented a new web portal for their coming game release “Returner Zhero”. The page works as one of the promotion
channels of the game and link to social media, previous releases and downloadable press-kit material.
channels of the game and link to social media, previous releases and downloadable press-kit material.
Working with a lot of rich and vivid-coloured images poses the challenge to ensure that the site doesn’t look cluttered. My Scandinavian Minimalism had to constantly fight with detail-heavy imagery, text overlays and a generally dark visual style. My goal for the site was to replicate the mysterious and intriguing feeling that is the main theme throughout the game, and to of course showcase the high level graphics content and environments that the game is built up of.
Returner Zhero is a space-mystery puzzle game in full 3D, mainly for mobile and tablet.
Previous Releases Page
Returnerthegame.com serves as a domain that can be updated for each new game added to the Returner Universe. Returner Zhero is the latest release, but the site also showcases Returner 77, the previous release. This was also designed and implemented by me.
Press Kits: Presenting the Brands at their Outmost Best
To ensure that the Returner Zhero, Returner 77 and Fantastic, Yes! brands were portrayed at their utmost best, I decided to re-structure and implement three separate press-kit pages with downloadable content. The design is extremely minimalistic, cutting away all excessive content, leaving just a simple to-the-point navigation and content presentation: logo’s, video’s, official press releases, selected reviews and articles etc.
A vertical menu with anchor-tags, takes the viewer directly to the requested content, that can be downloaded individually. At the bottom, and highlighted in the menu, is a downloadable ZIP file with the entire press-content, collected in a neat folder-structure.
To conclude
Working with visuals such as those for Returner Zhero and Returner 77 was truly an fun but challenging task. I had to constantly balance readability, white-space and other UX principles with the dark and mysterious visual style. The end result came out as a website that present game features, press-kit material and contact/SoMe possibilities, while at the same time capturing the style and more importantly feeling of the games. A mix-match between style and functionality.
Thanks for Reading!