Volley Solitaire Tripeaks
The first-ever Tripeaks Solitaire game for Amazon Alexa!
Volley Solitaire Tripeaks is a fun and challenging game for players of all ages. It's easy to play, but hard to master! Train your brain as you search for the perfect sequence of cards.
Platform
Amazon Echo Show
Tools
Playcanvas
Timeline
Fall 2022 Internship - 4 months
2 months on this project
Released
February 2022
“Xiaoying has been an enthusiastic, diligent, and professional designer, providing an exceptional level of work and attention to detail. She has carried herself with impeccable professionalism, asking questions and offering thoughts and ideas without the baggage of a creative ego. She is eager to tackle any problem we lay in front of her.”
— Dylan Shad. Game design lead at Volley
Internship Review
My Impacts
Shipped 30 unique levels with designed difficulty levels to increase player retention.
Designed and shipped the level progression path for NPE with tutorial levels.
Collaborated with a cross-disciplinary team in agile development.
Iterated level experiences using feedback from multiple playtesting sessions.
Gameplay
This is a video showing the changes made to the project after I joined.
Example levels
Turtle
Windmill
Expand
Jellyfish
Bow
Heart
Wave
Arrow
Check out Volley’s site here
For the second half of my internship, I created concepts for multiplayer social gameplay systems with design implications for Faceoff on IOS. I evaluated Song Quiz on Amazon Alexa and redesigned Song Quiz 2.0 with custom content generation for future iteration and work. As well as an Elo-inspired ranking system for Jeopardy on Roku TV. All of those works are under an NDA. Please reach out to me if you have any questions regarding my work.
Reflection
Being a game design intern at Volley was an invaluable experience for me. I worked with the most talented and kind people to ship the game in a very short timeframe. I took this opportunity to observe, learn, and reflect often. Here are some of my thoughts.
1. Always keep the platform in mind. A game lives on a platform. It is crucial to consider the advantages/disadvantages of the platform when designing a game. How and when do people play the game? What are the limitations of the platform? What else can we explore?
2. Inspiration can be found anywhere. One of my responsibilities working at Volley was to design the levels for Solitaire. As I ship more and more levels, I found myself hitting creative blocks. In those moments, I always found inspiration again in the most unexpected places. Look around and pay attention.
3. Test the design as early as possible. The game development process is complex and costly. Always try to test the design as early and often as possible before going into production. Every playtest can provide new knowledge to improve the design.
