By Breon
Role
Founder
Category
- WebAR Game
What I Did
- Concept Development
- UX/UI
- Art Direction
- Brand Design
- Song Design
Grab your hammers!
Debt Whackers is the world’s greatest Web AR video game that’s themed around student loan debt.
It’s about whacking student loan debt collectors. It’s weird and we love it. Picture this: you’re armed with a virtual mallet and get to whack debt dealing weasels and scamming snakes. But don’t hit Mr. Rozay, also known as The Collector, three times or it’s game over!
The talented full team consisted of Mr Lubo Designs for 3D illustration, Emre Ozdemir for web development and myself.
Getting Started
The game, inspired by merging the dynamics of Whack-A-Mole and Fruit Ninja, challenges players to hit targets within a minute while dodging penalties for striking the wrong character, Mr. Rozay “The Collector”. Three mistakes and the game ends, adding a layer of suspense and strategy.
In developing Debt Whackers, simplicity was key in the UI design to ensure an intuitive play experience.
Game Development
Game Development
Game Development
Game Development
Game Development
Game Development
Game Development
Game Development
Game Mechanics Demo
The construction phase kicked off in Unity with Emre setting up a test space to refine gameplay elements, such as character emergence and mallet mechanics.
Final Gameplay
Here’s a sneak peak at the final game play of the world’s greatest student loan debt WebAR game. The characters and settings were designed in Blender and the final game mechanics were fleshed out in Unity. We used Zapworks to deploy the WebAR experience.
The full Debt Whackers experience
The complete experience included a letterpress card, a WebAR game, and an official game anthem. My collaborative process with Mr. Lubo Designs was pivotal for the character development. Providing clear direction while allowing artistic freedom resulted in characters that were both true to my vision and enriched by his creativity.
Music is often the unsung hero of video games. To develop that key component, I used AI to create a catchy anthem for Debt Whackers. I created the anthem lyrics in collaboration with ChatGPT and the melody was built using Suno AI.
Customer Satisfaction Research
During the development of Debt Whackers, I aimed to explore AR interaction techniques and create an engaging game that encourages repeat play. Without setting specific KPIs, I chose to gauge the game’s success using a Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) from a detailed survey with eleven varied questions.
This approach offered a mix of qualitative and quantitative feedback on player experiences, including their likes, dislikes, any gameplay issues, and their general view of the game. After distributing over 100 copies of Debt Whackers, I gathered 26 insightful responses from the customer satisfaction survey.
Overall CSAT score: 73
This positions the game and card within the average value range across industries, according to Retently’s CSAT scoring. This indicates healthy customer engagement and a high level of service delivery.
Ease of gameplay: 4
Underscoring that despite noted gameplay challenges, the majority found Debt Whackers straightforward and enjoyable.
Player recommendation score: 4
This indicates that people find Debt Whackers to be noteworthy and shareable.
Further Reading
For a behind-the-scenes look at the development of the different elements of Debt Whackers, check out the following articles I wrote.