Sky Cove: The Keeper's Tale

Inspiration:

I really like cozy games and so wanted to design something in this space. I hadn’t seen anything similar. I made a list of things that could be interesting and then used ai to help refine the direction.

What it does:

Sky Cove: The Keeper's Tale puts you in charge of a carrier pigeon postal service on a remote archipelago, where every morning you match mail to birds across weather, personality, weight, and urgency then let them go and you tend to the roost and wait for them to return.

How we built it:

Designed as a complete pre-production package: game design document (GDD), player journey map, visual concept package, and production plan. The GDD (full design intent, economy rationale, and bird lifecycle system) and the Player Journey Map (experience targets per phase).

Challenges we ran into:

First time using AI to help design images and help out with game design in such a way.

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

The pigeon career arc that runs from unnamed recruit through mentoring to retirement, and the economy design was interesting to plan. Creating the player journey and the Visual concept package was fun, I haven’t developed anything like that before I usually flesh out a few ideas on paper and do a game design document but I don’t think through the specifics of a design concept until later focusing on grey boxing. It helped answer a lot of questions and make things more concrete.

What we learned:

I learned how to utilise AI to help develop ideas and improved how I work and refine the suggestions to shape content. Also, I learned how to scope a document better and how to put together a visual content package