What Animal Are You?

Link to game here: https://picrew.me/image_maker/227476

If you get sent straight to the game, click the "?" on the top right-hand corner to see instructions.

TLDR: A personality test made on the dressup game-making platform, Picrew for an assignment for CMU's  60-418: Gestural Games Toolkit.

What is Picrew?

Picrew is a Japanese dressup game-making platform. The site provides a simple base game that artists modify by uploading their own images to make their own game and share it with the internet. This tool is generally used to make anime character dressups, but there are some interesting ones that use this format to allow you to "dress up" scenes, buildings, etc. 

Some examples of Picrew are this, this and this.

Why this project?

Although Picrew is made for dressup games, it's essentially just a template with preset interactions that a creator can do anything with. I wanted to play with this recognizable, predictable, but flexible format to make something different. 

This was inspired by a Picrew I saw a long time ago (couldn't find it again) where each option chosen was a different textbox that told the next part of a story. It was in Japanese so I couldn't read it, but it got me thinking about what other kinds of games could be made with Picrew.

Why a personality test?

My favorite thing about playing Picrew is that it is a game about self-expression and sharing things about yourself with other people. I like finding cool Picrew, making myself in them, sharing them with friends, and seeing how they express themselves with it.

When coming up with the idea for this project, I was playing with making a narrative or puzzle game. I thought Picrew's ability to allow you to move around objects and layer them on top of each other by choosing options could make an interesting puzzle. However, that turn the core joy of a Picrew into just another game with a single answer, and would completely get a rid of the "sharing a final image" aspect of a Picrew.

I chose a personality test because the experience of taking a personality test is the same as a Picrew- the core joy lies in having a final product that expresses something about yourself, sharing the result with other people, and seeing what other people came up with.