Jenny Jokinen
Game Designer & Game Writer
I amA Finnish game designer and game writer passionate about games as an interactive experience and tirelessly finding new ways to engage the players.A game designer with over 2 years of experience working both in triple A and indie studios, and independently.A game designer who has studied many different game genres and their design conventions.And now ready to show the world what she's capable of!
Design work:
Idle Cat Stars was an idle game with live service elements about cat social media stars, developed by Unicorn Pirates Studio and published by East Side Games. I worked on the game from November 2019 to February 2020, until the game's worldwide soft launch.During my time on Idle Cat Stars I was the event team lead and designed all the events for the game, the costumes for the cats and promotional material for the events. As the team lead I was tasked to keep detailed game design documents to aid my team and make sure they always knew what they were doing, while also being the one who pitched these ideas to the publisher.I also designed other miscellaneous game mechanics, such as traveling ads, new character presentations and in-game store offers. I also worked with player feedback and data to balance the game.
I designed three different events for the game, all three which ran multiple times during the game's lifespan. These events were a slumber party, Gamer Cats and picnic.Events were separate from the main game. While the premium currency was shared between the two modes, events had their own usable currencies. These events were timed, shorter events lasting for two days and longer ones lasting up to five days. During the events the players could unlock new costumes for the participating cats by completing event specific goals. These unlockable costumes were the biggest selling point of the game and a way to the players to express themselves.
Here's the wire frame of a basic event. As you can see, the events were similar to the main game both in look and mechanics. My job when designing events was to decide the theme, get it approved by publisher, design the look of the event, the cats used and their costumes, the event specific currency and the narrative of the event.For the player, their main goal during an event was to unlock the new costume for one of the cats that was the main price of the event. This new costume would then be added to the player's costume collection. They'd also get to enjoy a new aesthetic for the game.When an event was happening, the player could easily with a tap of a button switch between main game and events. When a player would enter the event for the first time, they'd get some light narrative that introduces the event. After that they would get to play the game, gain likes, upgrade their cats and complete goals. During the event all the participating cats would be in their event costumes. Only one of those costumes was the price for the event, but seeing all the other costumes was a good incentive for the players to return to the game when the event would be available again. Maybe next time an awesome costume would be available for their favorite cat!
I am no artist, so I got to work with many talented ones to bring my ideas into life. With every costume I started by considering the cats look and personality. Every new costume had to reflect the character of each cat. After I had an idea for a costume I would gather some reference pictures, and with them the artists would bring my vision to life. Find out more of these costumes on Idle Cat Stars Instagram @idlecatstars. This was also the case with the general look of the events. While I had the final say in the event aesthetic, I would consult the artists on my team for example about the color scheme of the specific event.I also worked on tweaking Idle Cat Star's FTUE based on player retention, monetization using traveling ads, data analysis by going through focus group feedback and player data, and working with that by analyzing it independently and then brainstorming with my fellow designers about how to make the game the best version of our vision. I also got experience in giving pitches of my design ideas to the publisher, and that’s why I’m good at making mockups and expressing my ideas both in written and verbal format.
Unfortunately Idle Cat Stars was cancelled in May 2020.
Independent projects
Taptastic Hero got its start as a hypothetical hyper casual mobile game, where the goal is to run through levels and kill all the monsters. Later the idea grew to something bigger, and now Taptastic Hero is meant to become a casual mobile RPG.You play as Yorha, an older mercenary who has saved countless people, towns and cities in her career. She's even saved the world a couple of times! On the day of her supposed retirement, she goes to her favorite bar to celebrate, and there her barkeeper friend dares her to save the world one last time, but this time do it as fast as possible. He'll even pay her if she does it faster than anybody else before! The competitive Yorha of course agrees, and so the game begins!
Taptastic Hero is a RPG runner game with roguelite elements where you adventure through distinct and beautiful pixel landscapes, battling monsters and looting money.The game is played by tapping the monsters so that Yorha will attack them with her sword. If any monsters are blocking her way, Yorha needs to stop and kill all the monsters until she can continue her journey through the level. Every level ends with a boss monster that drops lots of money and special items. These items and money can be traded for leveling up, better gear and spells that Yorha can use in battle at her friend's bar. But here's the twist: Yorha cannot go back to the bar until her journey comes to an end: she either loses or saves the world.While the goal of the game is saving the world, the actual goal is to save the world, but speedrun it! And making world-saving fast is easy when you're powered up and have shiny new gear! This where the core gameplay loop comes into play: kill monsters, gain some money and loot, use that to make yourself more powerful and save the world even faster!While the story of the game is light, you would be able to talk and hang out with the other patrons at the bar, most of whom are good friends of Yorha. These patrons would also give quests, like kill a certain amount of monsters and you receive some special gear or item. The main quest of the game is given by the barkeeper: save the word but do it fast. He gives Yorha a new record to break and when it gets broken, rewards with gold. This way Yorha is always growing.
Yorha herself is a powerful woman, who has seen much. While she won't reveal you her age, her eyes tell a thousand stories of glory and loss.I wanted the protagonist of my first independent game project to be a woman of color, because they rarely get representation in stories, especially in games.The concept art shown here is not made by me (other than the title screen mock-up), since I am no artist. I am in-training to get better at 2D art, especially pixel art, but I am planning on working with artists (and programmers for that matter) when the game is out of the pre-production faze and enters production.
QA work:
I've also worked as a QA specialist at FXPS Services for six months. During my time have worked with the studio Cornfox & Bros, testing three of their games: Oceanhorn 2 (a 3D Zelda-like third person adventure game), Oceanhorn: Chronos Dungeon (a 2D top-down dungeon crawler with some light roguelike and RPG mechanics) and Bike Baron 2 (to be released soon, developed by Mountain Sheep and Mureena, published by Cornfox & Bros, a 2.5D physics puzzle game). I helped the teams ship two of these projects, Chronos Dungeon and Bike Baron 2.While my primary job has been testing their games, I have also been given the task to give my opinions about the game feel and balance. One of the bosses in Chronos Dungeon was tweaked based on my design feedback, and the reception for the better balanced boss has been great.As a QA tester I’ve learned to look at design from another angle: how the player’s truly interact with the game. Because as much as you can design a mechanic, you will never truly know if it’ll work, until you see a player destroy all your intended gameplay mechanics and find their own way. And it has been incredibly eye opening and fascinating! It has really given me perspective to my own design work, and now feel more confident than ever about my own design principles.