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LinkedIn profileTHE MISSION
As the sole UI/UX designer and artist in a two-person indie team, I created the whole look of Furball Fruits from scratch, from the first sketch to the screen in Unity: 12 cat characters, the in-game interface, menus and popups, icons, merge and bomb effects, UI animation, the logo set, and the Google Play icon, screenshots and marketing pictures. Ismayil Mammadov, the developer, built the game. I imported the art into Unity myself and set up the layouts for every phone size.
STORY OF THE PROJECT
Merge games are everywhere, and many of them look alike. Furball Fruits needed its own character. It also had a practical problem: on a small phone screen, the player has to tell the cats apart in a crowded box in a split second. So every decision served two goals at once: make it cozy and make it readable. The cats share one simple shape and grow in size, and each has its own color and belly pattern. The interface is drawn as part of the room the box sits in, not as a layer on top of it.
DESIGN PROCESS
It started with a message: Ismayil Mammadov, the developer, had the idea, and I said we could do it. Design and development then ran side by side, and the game went through three rounds of testing before its release on Google Play. The in-game screen changed the most: flat grey boxes in the concept, orange paper labels in the MVP, and a wooden shed full of cats in the final version.
// How it started
// Who we asked
- Azerbaijan 64%
- Kazakhstan 27%
- Russia 9%
// From idea to update
- Idea
- Side by side
- Design
- Moodboard
- Benchmarking
- Prototyping
- Development
- Prototyping
- Gameplay mechanics
- Design
- Testing
- Alpha: 21 testers
- Beta: 25 testers
- Pre-release: 17 testers
- Deployment
- Released on Google Play
- Monetization
- Watch an ad to continue after Boxed Out
- Update
CHARACTER DESIGN
Every cat is inspired by my own tuxedo cat, Lance. I drew them all from scratch as vector art in Affinity Designer, so each one stays sharp on any screen. The style is cute and hand-drawn, with a thick black outline that keeps every cat readable against the box and the other cats. This was the most fun part of the project: illustrating the characters, then seeing them come alive, drop into the box and merge.
// THE CHALLENGE
In a merge game, the player has to see at a glance which two cats will merge. On a phone, the smallest cats are only a few millimeters wide, and the box fills up fast.
// THE SOLUTION
The merge chain has 11 cats, from the smallest to the Watermelon Cat. Each one is told apart in three ways at once, so no single detail has to do all the work.
- Size. Every step up the chain is a bigger cat, so size alone shows how far a cat has grown.
- Color. Each cat has its own body color, from olive and yellow at the small end to brown and teal at the big end.
- Belly and face. All cats share one round body and belly, and each changes the belly pattern, ears and expression. The Watermelon Cat has a red belly with black seeds.
- Lance himself is in the game as the tuxedo cat on the bomb power-up.
UI SCREENS
I designed the main menu, pause menu, settings, in-game screen, win and lose screens, and the leaderboard. Buttons and backgrounds are part of the game art, so the interface feels like a piece of the world and not a layer on top. I drew the icon set and refined every screen in Figma.
MOTION AND VFX
I created the effects for merges and bomb explosions, and animated the interface. I drew everything frame by frame in Figma, and the developer made it work in Unity.
STORE AND BRAND ASSETS
I also made everything the game needed outside the game: the logo set, the Google Play icon, and the store screenshots and marketing pictures. They use the same cats and hand-drawn style as the game, and each screenshot explains one part of how to play in a single short line.
SOUND
We made the sound effects at home, in our kitchen, with flour and two pillows, recorded on an iPhone. The simple materials suited the cozy feel of the game.
UNITY IMPLEMENTATION
I imported all the art into Unity myself and set up UI anchoring, so the interface adapts to different phone screens. I checked every screen in Unity's Game view before release.
SCOPE AND RESULTS
A finished, released mobile game, with all visuals made by one designer: 12 cat characters, the game's screens and icons, merge and bomb effects, UI animation, the logo set, and the Google Play icon, screenshots and marketing pictures. Furball Fruits is rated 5.0 on Google Play.
// CORE HIGHLIGHTS
- Characters that read at any size. Eleven cats told apart by size, color and belly pattern, from the smallest to the Watermelon Cat.
- An interface made of the world. Shelves, a cardboard box and pinned notes do the interface's job, so the UI never sits on top of the game.
- From sketch to Unity. Art, UI, motion and store assets by one designer, imported and anchored in Unity for every phone size.
DEDICATED TO OUR CAT LANCE
Furball Fruits is dedicated to Lance, our tuxedo cat. He inspired every cat in the game, he is in it himself as the bomb, and he was there while we made it.
01 · Sketch
02 · Posted
03 · Lance