About The Amblios Club

The Amblios Club started development at the beginning of 2022 and has been funded by numerous grants, such as the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s i4i grant, the Innovate UK Smart grant, alongside funding from the University of Southampton. The project began with the intent of producing an app that encourages children suffering from Amblyopia (known commonly as lazy eye) to partake in their patching treatment. Currently 1 in 20 children suffer from the condition. Covering their dominant eye with an eyepatch helps strengthen their weaker eye and is a proven treatment plan that helps the condition. However, only 50% of children receive a promising outcome, as many kids find treatment uncomfortable and do not stick with the plan. Alongside help and advice from ophthalmologists and orthoptists from the Southampton General Hospital Eye Unit, we were able to design a companion app that hosts a suit of games and companion features that aim to both engage kids with patching, help track how long sessions have lasted, or keep track of when their next doctors appointment is. The app tries to help destigmatise wearing an eyepatch, by rebranding the condition as a superpower used when playing the games featured in the app. For instance, within the suit of games, some have been designed to utilise facial recognition software in order to have gameplay controlled by the players eyepatch; by tilting their head up and down, the patch moves the character on the screen in the corresponding directions. These games are therefore only playable when kids are wearing their eyepatch, making it an exclusive reward for children undergoing patching.

Below you can find our crowdfunding campaign video, which gives a detailed explanation of the app, and also includes an interview with Mr Jay Self, Associate professor of Paediatric Ophthalmology at the Southampton General Hospital Eye Unit.

My Role in The Amblios Club

Over the course of the project I have taken on multiple roles, all dependant on the stage of the project. At the start of the project my main role was to research and put together an art bible for the app. This included, but was not limited to: art and style references, character art and design, environmental setting research, technical guidelines for the style, character and scene proportions, etc. Once these decisions were made, I moved on to the creation of Game Design Documents. At this stage of the project many of the artistic and game design decisions had been made, at which point I began asset creation for background and foreground art, character animations etc. Finally, once the project had ended I then went on to create marketing material for crowdfunding and social media. Although these were my major roles, over the entire course of the project, I helped run/participate in player feedback events, which involved talking to children with the condition and their parents and gaining insight for what they may want to see in the app down the line.

Game Design

Working on the game design documents required a lot of research, planning and testing. They served to help direct the programmers when implementing the designs within unity. As the games were being implemented changes came naturally, for instance spawn rates that I wrote up were often tweaked after testing showed certain obstacles or rewards spawned too often or not frequently enough. Although only four games feature within the app (due to the apps size limitations) seven were designed; four of which I worked on by myself, the other three I collaborated with our teams designers to flesh out and produce. This along with an art bible I was created, helped lead the games development in a singular and consistent direction.

Sprite Sheets & Animations

Once the initial stages of design were complete, and many of the background assets were finalised, I moved my focus towards the characters. Working with my original designs I created sprite sheets of each character. Using those sprite sheets I was able to create the animations needed for each game. A few of the games only required static assets, but others such as “Rolling Hills” or “Safari Sprint” revolved heavily around character movement. Below you will find some examples of the animations featured within the app.

Art Direction & Asset Creation

When the idea of the app first started, the team generated ideas around what the theme of the app could be. We settled on producing a collection of games themed around a panda. This decision was made based on research and surveys conducted by a member of the team who found a gender neutral protagonist could draw the attention of both boys and girls using the app. The panda went on to become the protagonist and was given the name of Bambu. At this point I took on the responsibility of Art Director of the project, but I also spearheaded a lot of the design work as well. Using the original idea, I designed the setting to be a safari park, and made fellow characters to inhabit the games world. Most of the side characters are animals like Bambu and can be seen within the range of games the app offers. The final character I designed was a robotic caretaker named Spark who guides and instructs the player, helping them look after the collection of animals within the park. Besides fleshing out the apps narrative, I produced concepts and then final designs for all of the characters, ensuring they fit the overall style. These designs later grew into sprite sheets ready for animation. After designing and making style rules for the settings of each game, I then moved on to produce the environmental art. Within the collection of games everything visual you see I created and designed; this ranges from: characters, to background and foreground art, to obstacles, and even the UI design. To complete this work I used: Procreate, Krita, Blender and Adobe After Effects.

Research and Marketing

Although most of my work on this project was designing gameplay or leading the art direction of the app, I also worked to source feedback from parents and their children who suffering from Amblyopia, and I also created a lot of the marketing material for the app.

In order to try and make the app as user friendly and enjoyable as possible, we hosted a PPI event in Winchester, and we were also featured at a Nystagmus Event in Southampton in order to speak to children who suffer from eye conditions, and show them the app. The PPI event was hosted at the Winchester Planetarium; during the day I presented the app to children with Amblyopia and their parents, talked them through the direction we were taking the app, and asked for what they would like to see added in the future. This was a great opportunity to find out more about our target demographic, and the feedback we received funnelled into the design of the later designed games. The Nystagmus Event earlier this year afforded us the same opportunity to test the games and get feedback.

Besides playing my part in user testing, I also had a controlling role in the marketing of The Amblios Club. The crowdfunding campaign that has recently launched needed a gameplay trailer as well as a video explaining Amblyopia and the purpose of the app. For this work I produced both videos in Adobe After Effects. The explanation video was the most time consuming video to create. For this I was required to travel to Southampton, record and Interview Mr Jay Self from Southampton General Hospital Eye unit, edit that footage, hire and direct a voice actor, edit and build off a script produced by one of my co-workers, and piece together the remaining gameplay shots and footage we possessed. This video can be found at the top of this page. The gameplay trailer can be found here.

Gallery

Below you will find a gallery showing some of the screenshots of gameplay, UI used in app navigation, spritesheets and concept art.

  • "Spark" the Robotic Caretaker's final character design.

  • Untitled maze minigame scene recreation.

  • Assets featured in "Rolling Hills" first environment.

  • Level Select menu screen.

  • Assets featured in "Rolling Hills" second environment.

  • "Peek-a-bu" minigame's instructions UI.

  • "Scratch" one of the three antagnoists in the game.

  • "Lights out" minigame scene recreation.

  • "Scales" game antagonist spirte sheet.

  • Tiles example for "Safari Sprint" minigame.

Current State of The Amblios Club

Currently the app is in its final stages; most of the work is created, however, we are hoping to add a few more features to the companion side of the app. A test version of the app has been released to the Android App Store (link here) and a Crowdfunding Campaign on indiegogo has just been launched (link here). We are aiming to source £20,000 in order to complete the app and make it perfect for its release. Outside of this, the company is working closely with the University of Southampton’s media team to produce a press release advertising the app on the University of Southampton’s official website.