Role: Game Designer & Art Director
We created this game at Tresensa for our client Kettle Chips. They commissioned a playable ad for mobile platforms to promote their new campaign Extra In A Good Way.
Brief & Initial Ideas
Kettle Chips' campaign Extra In A Good Way was aimed to emphasize all the good things about their product such as flavor and crunchiness. They were bold & confident about their product. I was looking for ways to incorporate their boldness into an engaging fun experience.
For me, extraness resembled with explosions. I ended up sketching two game ideas. The first one, the player plays as a Kettle Chips potato & jumps over a flavor. When they clash successfully they explode into chips.
The second one was where the users shoot ingredients by aiming & shooting a cannon. The potato is the cannonball, just like in a circus.
The second idea was the winner. Shooting is a good & familiar mechanic to most & the idea of a potato being a circus cannonball was just in line with Kettle Chips' brand style: Fun and playful.
In the end, we end up polishing the latter concept into a game where the cannon turns into a platform once the potato is out.
Final Concept & Storyboard
In the finalized version of the game, player taps on the screen to fire the cannon. When the potato hits an ingredient, the ingredient explodes into potato chips and go into a Kettle Chips bag.
Once fired, the cannon turns into a platform that the player moves around to bounce the potato.
Once the player collects enough potato chips, the screen transitions into the next level with a new set of ingredients. There are three levels in total and they are all based on the three Kettle Chips flavors that the client wanted to promote.
There is no lose condition in the game. The player can fail as many times but keep playing until they reach the end. This was an engagement-based campaign so we benefit from a longer engagement duration.
Once the players finish the whole game, they are taken to an end screen where they are shown two potatoes jumping into each other and again exploding into chips. This is the place where the players can be redirected to the store page.
Gameplay
In the final game, player aims by moving the mouse/finger around & fire by tapping. Once they do, the cannon turns into a platform.
They drag the platform around to keep the potato falling of the screen & keep shooting ingredients.
The more ingredients the potato hits, the more it bounces & creates potato ships.
Once they collect enough number of potato chips - which is indicated by the fill bar on top of the screen - they move on to the next level.
There are 3 levels in total, each representing a different flavor.
After successfully completing all three levels, players are taken to the end screen.
Playable ads mostly work best in the form of hypercasual games. Easy to learn, satisfying to play.
Our game had very successful numbers in terms of performance. Here are some numbers from our campaign:
Campaign Dates: Mar 22 - Jun 18 2021
Impressions: 1,386,599,079
Engagements: 236,875,622
Engagement Ratio: 17.08%
Completion Ratio: 10.92%
Impressions indicate how many people are shown this ad.
Engagements indicate how many people play the ad.
Assets
Below are some art assets I prepared based on the campaign's art direction. Characters are created in Photoshop & animated using Spine.
