Self Service Life
Self Service Life is a live interactive game. Players can send real-time chats in the live broadcast room, "self-service" select products with the life labels in the game, then settle at the cashier to determine their characters' life direction and outcome. What kind of life do you want your character to live? Come to the Life Self-Service Shop and make your choice!
Game Genre
Character Development, Life Simulation, Streaming Interaction
Platform
PC (Keyboard - Mouse)
Tool Used
Unity, C#, ASeprite, Photoshop, OBS Studio
Roles
Solo Project
Time
April 2025 - Present
Target User
Socializer
Design Process
Initial Phase
Rough Idea
This project was originally initiated as an independent course assignment. The theme I was given was "Live Interactive Games," which required me to design an alternative controller video game that can be played with real-time chats through Twitch live broadcast.
When I received the topic, the character development game Volcano Princess was released. This game recalled some of my childhood memories about playing Tamagotchi and dolls. I thought that the character-developing gameplay and no-cost parenting experiences would resonate with players with similar experiences and make my design stand out among several competitive bordcasting interaction games.​
Then, I did a simple analysis of Volcano Princess's core gameplay system and found that the main mechanic of this type of character development game is based on the "schedule arrangement" toward the player's developing object. The process directions and outcomes are distinguished by numerical values ​​such as character attributes and NPC favorability.
Therefore, I drafted a design that players can post events in the live chat to arrange a shared child's daily schedules for attribute development. Different total attribute scores determine the different destinies of this shared child in adulthood. ​
I think the highlight of this design is the chaotic-joyful party feeling created by the arrangement of chats in the live broadcast room and the surprise when the final result is revealed. Also, players will stay in the live broadcast room until they see the game results out of curiosity and participation, which greatly improves the replayability of the game.
First Prototype
Based on the idea of ​​raising children through live crowdfunding, I referred to the numerical design of "basic attributes + pressure value" of Chinese Parents to prototype a simple Twitch live interactive game demo.
In this demo, players can arrange the current child's schedule by sending the numbers corresponding to the events in the real-time chat (Study = 1, Eat = 2, Break = 3, Hobby = 4, and Free Time = 5). The game's settlement checkouts daily, and players need to quickly send numbers to compete for the 8 slots in each settlement cycle (slots are cleared and refreshed after each day's settlement). After each day's settlement, the child's "Intelligence", "Strength", "Finance", and "Pressure" will be updated according to the values ​​represented by the scheduled events to advance to different endings.
Initial Playtest
After two times of public playtests, I summarized the following problems:
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Need sound effects
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UI and icons were confusing
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The game loop had some bugs
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Too long game progression, which made players' input not obvious
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Lack of visual feedback, especially the child's age and appearance change
Iteration
New Inspiration
Besides the playtest feedback, I want to show innovation by differentiating my game's concept delivery method from traditional character-developing games.
When I was browsing references, I found an interesting idea, The Restaurant of Life, which is a short film about people deciding their destinies in a restaurant, like ordering food but paying with time (years). Also, Life Restart’s popularity on social media gave me the inspiration for gameplay design other than numerical development.
Therefore, I decided to further open up the freedom of this game. Without changing the fundamental concept of establishing a chaotic party atmosphere in the live broadcast room, I changed the game's expression to self-service shopping to encourage players to make plans by adding prices of different products.
Reflected Design
The new design will revolve around the concepts of "supermarket shopping" and "checkout receipts", so stay tuned.
​Coming Soon ...
