Pop-Up Book Alternative Controller Fabrication | Interactive Installation Design | Narrative Game Design | Asian-American Storytelling
Game Experience Director
January 2022 - May 2023
Marielle Brady - Narrative Designer
Joh Chung - Music Composer
Ariel Li - Art Lead
Johan Song - Fabrication Engineer
Julia Wang - Unity/Arduino Engineer
Unity Game Engine
Arduino
After Effects
Premiere Pro
Procreate
Blossom is a slice-of-life narrative game set inside a child's playroom space about Aspen, an Asian-American girl, and her experiences growing up. The experience is guided by an interactive pop-up book alternative controller.
Read more about the experience here.
STEPPING INTO BLOSSOM
Blossom is a slice-of-life interactive novel about a young Asian-American girl who struggles with being boxed into labels others have given her and living up to their expectations.
Stepping into a playroom space, an open book sculpture stands at five feet tall in the center, displaying a projection of falling flower petals. The room itself has minimal belongings and furniture, but the pieces come together and hint at who the owner of this space might be.
In front of the sculpture, there is a clear seat for the guest on the floor that sits in front of a small table holding a large fabric-bound pop-up book. This book opens up to become the controller of the story that begins to play out on screen.
The story is told through five chapters, each chapter focusing on Aspen at a different age as she struggles with keeping up with the expectations of others.
The entire experience itself is navigated by a pop-up book alternative controller. By interacting with the tactile elements inside the book, players are able to play minigames and complete mini-interactions that have an impact on the story.
To push the magic of pop-up books even further, the story is projection mapped onto a large book sculpture that acts as the projection surface.
The experience itself is then set in a physical playroom space, designed to mirror the art on screen to bring players into Aspen’s world and invite them to sit and open the book to her life.
Player experience Aspen's life on screen at a specific age and receive context surrounding a particular event in Aspen’s childhood.
While not physically interactive, this phase of gameplay serves as an important prelude to the main minigames of each chapter.
Players are prompted to complete a minigame by interacting with the pop-up book controller.
Players watch the impact of their actions during the minigame take effect.
BREAKING DOWN THE STORY
The story of Aspen is loosely based on my own life and each page of the pop-up book controller, and in turn the narrative itself, portrays a different event in Aspen’s life.
As an Asian-American woman, I knew I couldn’t tell a story about my youth without addressing how my identity and culture shaped my experiences. During pre-production of Blossom, I closely examined my own life and how my ethnicity affected my childhood and spoke to friends and family about their experiences growing up in the United States.
This process was daunting as I was, and still am, painfully aware of the lack of accurate representation of Asian-Americans in Western entertainment media. The importance of this subject matter encouraged me to spotlight the nuanced issue of microaggressions and childhood ignorance head on while also showcasing that these experiences aren’t the only defining memories that affected Aspen through her childhood.
To be able to tell my story as authentically as possible, it felt only natural to tell Aspen’s story through snapshots of her life at different ages from 5 to 18. The time progression then lent itself to how I inevitably structured my story, which is based on the theme of labels Aspen is given at each age:
I worked with my narrative designer, constantly iterating on the story to distill each chapter down to just the core moments. These moments became what I like to call memory snapshots: an experience that comes to you in a flash, where emotions are felt first, often in a visceral manner.
With a background in UX design, my main philosophy is always inclusion. I designed for the tertiary user with as much focus as I did for the primary user. But when designing interactive entertainment, that’s not always the smartest course of action.
However, I decided early on in pre-production for Blossom that I wanted to acknowledge the different levels of interactivity within the experience that could draw in different players and viewers.
Player enters the space, sits down and actively engages with the experience.
Player enters the space and actively observe as another player plays the game, but they do not play an active role in affecting Aspen's story.
Player enters and interacts with Aspen's room, but leaves before being able to engage with Aspen's story.
Each player type is important because they represent, on some level, the types of people that come and go in our lives...
By creating this layered audience immersion, the storytelling outside of Blossom also becomes much more meaningful.
CREATING THE PAGES
An important question I asked myself when beginning pre-production for Blossom was:
The experience itself is deeply rooted in the personal narrative, so how could integrating the mechanics into a physical book enhance the gameplay? In short, pop-up books are inherently narrative games, so in creating Blossom, it felt seamless integrating a pop-up book into an alternative controller.
The interactive affordances that exist in pop-up books have a level of familiarity with most people. They're a common form of entertainment for kids and adults, so visual interaction cues, such as tabs and flaps, inherently lend themselves to explore other methods that bring the paper to life.
By keeping to these common and recognizable paper mechanisms, but redefining how they translate on screen and narratively, I was able to highlight their narrative purpose in Aspen’s story and better immerse players into the theming behind each chapter.
Another important factor I had to consider in the initial stages of development was the art direction of Blossom. With children’s storybooks, the art styling aims to grab and keep the attention of young kids, often with bright colors and simple shapes and figures. I wanted to stay true to the “kiddie lit” aesthetic, but I also wanted the artwork to play a meaningful role in showcasing Aspen’s emotions throughout the story.
Through a discussion with my art lead, we developed a color palette that utilized the psychology behind color and emotions and assigned color themes to each chapter’s artwork.
The driving force behind Blossom is the story, so it felt natural to want to create mechanics that were also driven by the narrative. I wanted to be able to build a player-game relationship within Blossom where players felt connected to Aspen through their actions. By putting themselves in a position to actively choose to learn more about Aspen’s life, players can see how these memories collectively play a defining role in how Aspen changes throughout her youth.
My main focus was to reimagine common tactile actions, like turning, pushing and pulling, into storytelling moments where players would immediately understand the actions they were performing and how it affected Aspen. In doing so, the experience would be more immersive within the pop-up book itself and the actual narrative.
Each minigame was designed to give players a glimpse into Aspen’s struggles as she deals with her own anxieties and expectations of herself.
WALKING THE SPACE
To ground the experience in Aspen’s story, I made the physical space mirror the playroom, where the game starts and ends, so when players finish the game, they are still surrounded by Aspen’s space.
This provides players a space to still exist inside Aspen’s world where they can reflect on themselves and on Blossom, even after the game has ended.
When designing Blossom, I wanted audiences to see the book come to life in an entirely different way, so I built a whimsically large book sculpture that would showcase a projection of the game. Players could now imagine that the book itself was coming to life. The book projection was able to highlight player actions on a larger scale, creating a stronger relationship between the player and the narrative on screen.
SHARING BLOSSOM
In March, I had the opportunity to showcase Blossom as a part of the alt.ctrl.GDC exhibit at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
What began as a stretch goal turned into reality and the experience itself was a complete whirlwind. Blossom was put to the ultimate stress test and through the many audience reactions I witnessed and conversations I had, I not only extracted a lot of learnings on how to improve the experience moving forward, but experienced up-close the emotional impact the project had.
Audiences were consistently in awe of and surprised that each page and chapter of Blossom had its own defining mechanic. Many people brought up how they thought the pop-up book controller was incredibly unique and special as it brought them back to their own childhood playing with pop-up books. They were inspired by the story and how personal it felt and thought the experience as a whole was absolutely innovative with how each element came together and interacted with each other. Their words not only validated the complexity of our project, but showed us that there is a definitive want for more narrative focused mechanisms in gaming.
“Is the book the controller? That’s so unique, wow!”
“Oh my gosh each page has a different minigame on it, that’s crazy. It’s like 5 controllers in one.”
I knew how important the story of Blossom was to me, and to some extent I knew it would strike a chord with others, but I was caught off guard by how deeply it affected some people. There were multiple cases where players would turn to me after finishing with tears in their eyes, thanking me for making Blossom.
Many players expressed their gratitude for spotlighting an Asian-American story about childhood and the issues we often faced in our youth. I was also grateful to see that the game spoke to audiences of all ages, with many parents expressing to me the importance of such stories, speaking about their kids and how they would love to have something like Blossom exist on the market for them.
“I wish my kids could play this, they would love it.”
“It’s crazy to see a game with an Asian-focused narrative being showcased at GDC.”
“That was so beautiful to play and watch.”
Overall, being able to share my personal work at GDC was one of the scariest things I have professionally done. Prior to attending GDC, I struggled with finding value in my own work and artistry because I didn’t have the confidence to share them publicly.
Getting catapulted into the chaos of showcasing at a conference forced me to push aside my fears and focus on my work, my team and my story.
REFLECTION
Through the process of creating Blossom, I found my voice.
I was able to share my story with hundreds of people and got an answer to the question I had asked myself at the beginning of this project. To design a physically interactive experience that evokes childhood reflection, every decision needs to stem from authenticity, from the narrative to the mechanics to the team I found. This authenticity is what has allowed others to step into the story of Blossom seamlessly and bring a part of it with them as they reflect on their own experiences after.
Reflecting back on Blossom now, I believe the labor that went into building the experience mirrors the story itself. When making physical art, it feels so much scarier to create something “ugly”. There’s a permanency that exists in these creations as they will always take up space, whether it be in a workspace or in the trash. In that regard, the anxieties of my own expectations to make each prototype a masterpiece slowly overwhelmed me. It reached a point where I couldn’t get myself to build the experience in its entirety, fearing that the moment I put all the pieces together, the end result would feel like a stranger.
Showcasing at GDC forced me to break through that wall. Like the chapters I connected to create Blossom, I was able to recognize how each physical piece came together to create a complete story of who I was as an artist. There will always be parts to my work that I believe can be improved, but I have trust in the authenticity of my voice and my ability to use it now. The story of Blossom began 20 years ago but continues on, even after the last page is turned.
Thank you to my wonderful team for helping me bring Blossom to life! And to my thesis advisors for all your advice and support.
Designed by LXM