Think Like a Shrink

{ORIGINAL IP}Think Like a Shrink
{ROLE} Art Director / Game Designer / Producer
{CATEGORY} App
{COMPANY} NTP / Mind-Gamz
{DESCRIPTION} Travel back through time with Dr. Z, the games’ resident therapist, to treat colorful characters from the Trojan War. Gain insights into your own relationships as you interact with patients and explore issues that are as relevant today as they were 2,000 years ago. “Think Like a Shrink” and discover why people disguise their real feelings from themselves, preventing them from leading more full and satisfying lives. The game features 4 patients to analyze, Game Center leader boards & achievements.
{MY ROLE} Based on the book of the same name, I worked with the author of Think Like a Shrink, Dr. Chris Zois, to design the game play this App. The challenge was to make therapy fun and engaging, so we decided it would be more interesting if you got to analyze famous characters from history. The core play mechanics were even patented.

I served as both art director and producer on this product. I worked with a company in India to create art assets and a US based company for the Objective C engineering. As the art director, I supervised the design of the characters, environments and storyboards. The majority of the assets were created using Adobe Illustrator (vector) to “future proof” the designs – making them renderable for any platform – at any resolution. As a producer, I found external studios and managed contracts, milestone deliverables and payment.

Screenshots
Character line up
Phonemes
Because this was a therapy game, we had many expressions to convey how the character was feeling.
Cut Scenes
we did not have the budget for true animation, so we fashioned our cut scenes after typical screens found on Nintendo DS at the time. in fact, the original target platform was NDS, but then iPhone launched and we changed gears.