peterbamuhigire Game Visual-Experience Orchestration
Translate a game’s player promise into a coherent, testable visual and interaction experience without duplicating implementation, documentation, or shared design doctrine.
Use When
- A game or playable prototype needs an end-to-end visual-experience direction.
- Player fantasy, core loop, controls, HUD, world readability, feedback, camera, accessibility, art production, and handoff must reconcile.
- Mobile, PC, console, web, 2D, or 3D presentations need one evidence-gated route.
- A game project needs the correct specialist stack rather than generic app UI guidance.
Do Not Use When
- The task is a non-game app or website; route to groups 04, 07, or 14.
- The task is only HUD/menu/interface craft; use
game-ui-hud-and-diegetic-interfaces. - The task is only visual-development and asset-system direction; use
game-art-direction-and-visual-development. - The task is only response, impact, camera, motion, VFX, or haptics; use
game-feel-feedback-camera-and-haptics. - The primary audience is children or a learning outcome is claimed; pair with
educational-and-childrens-game-experience. - Game mechanics, architecture, production implementation, or SRS authoring is the main work; route to the software or SRS engine.
Required Inputs
| Artefact or context | Source | Required? | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Player promise, fantasy, cohorts, core loop, failure and stopping model | Product brief or approved SRS | yes | Defines what the experience must communicate |
| Platforms, devices, input modes, camera and performance budgets | Technical owner | yes | Constrains presentation and evidence |
| Art, UI, audio, narrative, culture, learning, safety and business hypotheses | Accountable owners | conditional | Exposes specialist gates and unresolved authority |
| Build identity and available test evidence | Engineering and QA | required for pass claims | Separates documentation from observed results |
Workflow
- State the player promise, minute-to-minute loop, desired feelings, stopping points, and player cohorts. Stop if these conflict or are only slogans.
- Map every loop step to player question, required information, input, world or interface response, failure/recovery, accessibility alternative, and evidence class.
- Route craft: interface to
game-ui-hud-and-diegetic-interfaces; world/asset system togame-art-direction-and-visual-development; response/camera togame-feel-feedback-camera-and-haptics; age/learning toeducational-and-childrens-game-experience. - Co-activate the existing owners for typography, colour/contrast, iconography, illustration, motion, touch/haptics, localisation, ethics, inclusive design, research, tokens, handoff, app-store assets, and pre-launch QA.
- Reconcile priorities across calm and intense states, couch and handheld distance, input modes, localisation expansion, sensory settings, device budgets, and non-intrusive commercial surfaces.
- Produce a route-and-gate map with named owners, artefacts, dependencies, evidence, failed paths, stop decisions, and downstream implementation/SRS links.
- Test the representative loop in a versioned prototype or build. A document proves intent only; device, player, learning, cultural, and release claims require their matching evidence.
Decision Rules
| Condition | Action | Wrong-choice failure |
|---|---|---|
| Player cannot answer the next-action question | Increase world or HUD signal priority before adding decoration | Visual richness conceals the playable verb |
| Screen information competes with the world fantasy | Prefer in-world, contextual, or progressive presentation where comprehension survives | Immersion or readability is sacrificed without evidence |
| Cohorts or platforms require conflicting treatments | Share semantic intent; specify platform/cohort adaptations | Pixel parity creates inaccessible or non-native play |
| Monetisation interrupts play, learning, narrative, saving, recovery, stopping, or exit | Block the placement and redesign it for explicit choice or a predictable genuine break | Revenue logic damages agency, trust, or safety |
| Required build/device/player evidence is missing | Return a conditional specification and test plan | Documentation is misreported as observed quality |
Capability Contract
Read/search access to product, SRS, design, technical, cultural and evidence artefacts is required. Review is read-only by default. Editing is limited to authorised design artefacts; builds, publication, purchases, production mutation, participant contact and external approval require separate authority.
Degraded Mode
Without a stable player promise or representative loop, stop detailed craft and return the conflicting decisions. Without a build, device, participant, cultural reviewer, or learning study, produce a specification and evidence plan marked not assessed; never issue a release or outcome pass.
Anti-Patterns
- App dashboard dressed as a game HUD. Fix: start from player questions, world context, input pressure, and viewing distance.
- Art-first direction with no playable readability contract. Fix: trace every visual pillar to verbs, threats, affordances, and budgets.
- “Game feel” used as unmeasurable polish. Fix: specify trigger, response, timing, intensity, alternative, and test.
- Accessibility added after the look is locked. Fix: include access modes and redundant cues in the first representative slice.
- Retention or ads overriding voluntary play. Fix: pair commercial hypotheses with agency, stopping, wellbeing, privacy, child-safety, and trust gates.
- One shared platform forcing both games into the same identity. Fix: share capabilities and evidence formats while preserving game-specific expression.
Outputs
| Artefact | Consumer | Evidence and acceptance condition |
|---|---|---|
| Game visual-experience route map | Product, design and technical owners | Every experience concern has one owner, neighbour, dependency and decision |
| Loop-to-presentation matrix | Specialist designers and QA | Each loop step has signals, inputs, feedback, alternatives, budgets and evidence |
| Visual-experience gate report | SRS, implementation and release teams | Claims are labelled by evidence class; blockers, failed paths and unassessed checks remain visible |
Examples
examples/river-crossing-route-map.md— a worked route for a child-led river-crossing encounter, including HUD, art, feedback, learning, ads, evidence and stop decisions.
References
references/orchestration-contract.md— ownership boundaries, loop-to-presentation schema, evidence classes and gate order.../../../doctrine/design-doctrine.md— authored-choice, typography, anti-slop and cross-cutting rules.../../../doctrine/references/wcag-2.2-criteria.md— shared accessibility floor; game-specific access still needs gameplay evidence.