MindGames Football is a socially-driven American Football trivia game in which you can support your team and win prizes by answering questions about football. The game aims to foster fans natural competitiveness and rivalries by pitting them against each other in the individual and team standings.

Developed for long-time okellydesign partners MindSports, the game builds on the work and successes of MindGames Baseball, expanding its scope and depth to deliver a highly engaging user experience.

On signing up for the game, users choose their team, and can then either go straight to playing in the championship, or engage with their profiles, team information, team profile and of course, the other fans of both their own team and their rivals. The game is designed to reinforce the fan loyalty at every turn by linking the team logo to the user and even changing the color and graphics on each page to relate to the colors of their team. Each team has its own customized page with its stats and a wall for fan message and interaction.

The game design builds on a palette of colors and graphic elements to deliver an aesthetic that is contemporary, masculine and football-specific. This is carried across the game in every detail. As part of the games development, I also designed the identity as well as a suite of team logos and trophies, which was quite fun! The trophies were designed to be appealing and desirable, and to create a real sense of achievement when winning them.

The game itself has both trivia and image-guessing type questions, and the user plays by selecting their answer within the time given. The quicker the answer, the more points are given (which then drive both the players and the players team overall rankings). Questions are modular in appearance, and build in difficulty and choice-options through each round.

A large part of the design challenge was devising a way to keep the game within a 585pixel height on all screens, especially the game screens, to ensure that the user doesn’t have to scroll at all to see the elements. Many pages are quite dense with content and information, but the challenge was met and the game-play is much improved as a result.

Overall, this is a project, and a game, that I am very proud to have worked on. The game has already attracted over 2,000 monthly players, a figure which will no doubt increase as the football season progresses over the coming months.

You can view and play the game here — try it out, it’s quite fun!