Work Collection

Where's Tess

Project snapshot

Where's Tess is a visual novel mobile game that follows Tess, a young journalist, as she competes in a travel competition while navigating personal and professional challenges.

As the Lead UI Designer, I designed the game’s interface from scratch, creating a cohesive visual identity that supported both the narrative and player experience, focusing on features like Intimacy, Dream Diary and Shop. My work contributed to the game being featured in iOS's "New Games" section with over 100k+ downloads

The spark

We set ourselves a goal: ship our first visual novel in under 12 months on a lean budget. Starting with a seven‑person core team, we aimed to create a visual novel that delivers an authentic, inclusive and engaging romance experience

Our success metric for launch was simple: reach 1000 players to fund future chapters. Tight scope, tighter timeline, zero room for bloated features.

The challenge (design perspective) ⭐️

“Make every screen feel like an app inside Tess’s phone, but keep it one story.”

We needed to craft a fluid experience that lives inside Tess’s phone. Each in‑game “app” needed its own on‑brand look, just as real mobile apps do, yet players had to perceive them all as chapters of one story, not separate products.

“Make every screen feel like an app inside Tess’s phone, but keep it one story.”

We needed to craft a fluid experience that lives inside Tess’s phone. Each in‑game “app” needed its own on‑brand look, just as real mobile apps do, yet players had to perceive them all as chapters of one story, not separate products.

“Make every screen feel like an app inside Tess’s phone, but keep it one story.”

We needed to craft a fluid experience that lives inside Tess’s phone. Each in‑game “app” needed its own on‑brand look, just as real mobile apps do, yet players had to perceive them all as chapters of one story, not separate products.

“Make every screen feel like an app inside Tess’s phone, but keep it one story.”

We needed to craft a fluid experience that lives inside Tess’s phone. Each in‑game “app” needed its own on‑brand look, just as real mobile apps do, yet players had to perceive them all as chapters of one story, not separate products.

APPROACH

Building the core system - Mechanics

To pull this off we mapped the game to four player verbs and designed a “micro‑brand” for each in‑game app. For that, the team and I defined the early mechanics. I Mapped every interaction to one of four verbs:

  • Read and Choose: Main Story branching chapters

  • Post and DM: PeekaPic social feed

  • Track and Boost: Stardom popularity meter

  • Gift and Unlock: Intimacy relationship builder

Keeping to these verbs prevented feature bloat and kept development focused.

Building the core system - Monetization

Now it was time to see how those actions power the economy of the game. We built a three‑currency system where crowns and keys have a free to play option, and diamonds (premium) to let players speed up choices or access to exclusive content.

With both free‑to‑play and paid paths, every player can move through the story at the speed—and cost—that feels right for them

Soft currencies

  • 👑 Crowns —> gained from ads, login streaks, finishing chapters.
    Spend on: Outfits and special‑moment routes

  • 🔑 Keys —> earned the same way.
    Spend on: Unlocking the next chapter.

Hard currency

  • 💎 Diamonds —> purchased in‑shop or won as rewards.


    Spend on: RSVP, side missions and Dream Diary episodes.

Building the core system - Flow

Feature noodles, not spaghetti

Each mechanic fed the next: reading unlocked posts, posts boosted Stardom, Stardom opened RSVP events and Intimacy that deepened the main character and romantic interest's romance.

Building the core system - Reusable components

Built core design system (and maintenance) 

Tokenized colors, typography, spacing, and phone‑app components in Figma + Unity. Defining at early stage helped new UI members to focus on delivery faster and creating from existing core foundations

Process- Fast iteration

Community pulse checks

Ran quick Discord polls to test wording and UI tweaks.

  • Held focused 1‑on‑1 interviews that kept dialogue authentic and produced a realistic feature wish‑list.

  • Added a lightweight in‑game survey to back the qualitative insights with hard numbers.

  • Monitoring Discord feedback helped being close to the community and fast actionable responses

RESULTS

Quick summary: Where I added value

  • UI from blank page to live ops: wireframes to final art

  • Scaled process for a growing team: workflow templates, file‑naming conventions, bi‑weekly syncs, QA check-lists

  • A design system that includes QA check list and prefab UI that improved delivery time in 25%

  • A Monetization system friendly for the player and profitable for the team

Evolution of main screen

Quick summary: Did it work?

We proved the concept could work

  • Over 100 k installs in the first six months, organic and with ads. Discovery was strong, but we saw a drop‑off after Chapter 3, an opportunity for tighter event cadence.

  • 55 % of new players reached Chapter 3 and 70 % of them dove into Intimacy, but players were spending about 15% less weekly day than top games in our genre. That tells us we could add more customizations in the next version.

  • Community ask for it: Representation of a character beyond their sexuality. People who play Tess are happy for the representation found in this game. Queer community representation is a real factor that makes the game more touching

These wins unlocked budget for two new seasons arcs and ongoing live‑ops support. 🔥

Some learnings

Prototype small, then build the system. Our initial design‑token system was overkill. After trimming it down we saved some weeks. Next time, I’ll test core elements in the engine before building a full design system, specially on tight, fast‑moving projects.

  • Prototype to learn, not to impress. We lost a week polishing a feature mockups we later discarded. Click‑through wireframes revealed true flow issues in just hours.

  • Representation = craft. Sensitivity reads and queer collaborators level‑up the whole product.

BONUS: This project showed me that great design isn’t just about making things work—it’s about how players feel. A unified visual style can tell the story and make the game more fun and memorable.

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