Interaction Design · UI/UX · Narrative Game
Unboxing
Mysteries
Turning a cosy collecting ritual into something quietly unsettling.
Windows · playable prototype
Turning a cosy collecting ritual into something quietly unsettling.
I deliberately kept the environment restrained so that small shifts in colour, sound and narrative could carry more emotional weight.
The game begins in a muted dusk-purple palette with warmer accents. A steaming coffee, soft light and the city outside the window make the desk feel private and comfortable.
Tactile phone keys, message pings and understated building ambience reinforce that intimacy. Later, the coffee cools, rain begins and the same evening palette starts to feel more isolated.
The core loop intentionally feels familiar and rewarding before the narrative begins to recontextualise it.
The player repeatedly chooses what to type, creating the feeling of participating in a real conversation. But the underlying narrative remains largely linear: different responses express attitude without giving the player the power to simply escape what is happening.
“The story was engaging, and it felt like I was in control.”Playtest response — despite the dialogue branches ultimately converging.
Beneath the mystery narrative, I wanted to explore the gap between doing something ordinary and being able to guarantee that it is safe. The protagonist is chatting, collecting something she enjoys and participating in an apparently harmless online interaction.
Yet attention and familiarity gradually become uncomfortable. The concept draws on everyday calculations many women make around privacy and personal safety: what is safe to share, who is safe to trust, and how quickly an ordinary interaction can take on a different meaning.
The constrained dialogue supports that idea. Players can decide how they respond emotionally, but they cannot simply choose for the situation not to exist.
This also created an important design challenge: limited agency still needs to respect the boundaries a player has already expressed.
The playtest evaluated whether the interaction was understandable, but just as importantly whether the restrained atmosphere produced the emotional shift I intended.
“who else lowkey got creeped out”Unprompted reaction after playing
“I lowest of key also did.”
“I liked how it slightly unsettled me at 3 am. Perfect for bedtime.”
Anonymous, unprompted messages shared where the playtest was distributed.The conversation continued beyond the structured playtest. Players spontaneously compared their reactions and talked about the experience without being prompted by survey questions. That was especially valuable to me: the game had naturally given people something they wanted to discuss together.
Players described the experience as cosy, immersive, unsettling and creepy.
The cute figures and reveal loop helped the opening remain playful before the tone changed.
Players tried to interact with environmental objects and were not always sure what was clickable.
A small collectible character set designed to keep the unboxing loop playful and visually rewarding. Each BunBun appears both as a phone icon and as the figure the player can collect.
I developed the prototype as a solo project, writing the dialogue and creating the visual assets, UI, animations and interaction systems before integrating the experience in Unity.
Selected responsibilities
Concept development · narrative writing · pixel art · UI/UX · interaction design · animation · audio editing · Unity integration · C# · playtest design · iteration
No individual element creates the shift on its own. The dusk palette, rain, cooling coffee, restrained soundscape, dialogue and limited agency work because they all move in the same direction.