About This Project

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a fighting game that features mostly Nintendo characters. I improved some of its menus, added a new character customization feature, and adapted the game for PC.

My Roles and Responsibilities

My task was to improve the flow of the menu system, add a new character customization feature, and adapt the menu system for cross-platform play. Since all the major consoles have controllers that are mostly equivalent to one another, I decided to adapt Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for PC.

Length of the Project

Each part of the project took about 1 week to complete, for a total of approximately 3 weeks.

Challenges

To figure out how to improve the existing gameplay flow
To add a character customization feature
To adapt the game for cross-platform play
To present the changes to stakeholders

Work Process

For this project, I did the following:

Experience Goals and Visions

I started by listing some experience goals and visions for the Smash menus.

Later, I repeated this process for the character customization feature.

Scope and Design Hypothesis

I listed the changes I wanted to make and sorted them in order of priority.

For the character customization feature, I listed the design hypotheses necessary for the feature to work as intended.

Flow Charts

I made a flow chart for the Smash section of the menus, which is what players have to go through to get to gameplay.

For the character customization feature, I decided to expand on the existing Mii Fighter customization feature:

Instead of only the Mii Fighters having custom movesets, I decided to bring back the custom movesets feature from the previous game. Actual costumes for individual characters are already available, and are most prominently seen during matches were where multiple players have picked the same character. Expanding on that would lead to confusion and possibly even feasibility issues, as each new costume would need to have a large number of color options so that players wearing the same costume would still look different.

Wireframes and Prototypes

I made mid-fi wireframes based on screenshots of the existing Smash menus and added sorting methods:

Testing revealed that Switch players prefer to have a button on the controller that allows them to swich sorting methods directly, without moving the cursor to the button: