The game pillars for Iridescent were: traversing a palette of emotions, creating atmospheres around colors, and making the game narrative-driven. So, during the few months I had available, I focused the user experience in this direction.

The only game mechanic revolves around the crystal. You have to look through it to reveal the sequence of colors or passages. Depending on the level, the way you look through it can vary slightly, from anamorphosis to decals and chromatic aberration.

> This choice was made with our target audience in mind (see personas), focusing on a simple mechanic that enhances the experience rather than a succession of mechanics. To ensure that these three variants worked, we tested each mechanic in prototype form early in development.

The game is divided into four levels, each with its own color and mood. Initially, the idea was to have one color per level and then add the color from the previous level to the current level. In level 4, we would therefore have four colors simultaneously. 

> This was a real design challenge, excluding anyone with color blindness. In addition, it made it necessary to use multiple visual cues. We ran the risk of losing players. As a result, we chose a color for each of the four levels: blue, red, purple, and iridescent. This allowed us to reinforce the artistic identity of each level while respecting the pillars. In addition, we made sure to reinforce the types of cues and feedback: visual, haptic, and auditory.

During the first few weeks, I created a document enabling us to follow the GAG (Game Accessibility Guidelines) by job role, allowing each team member to know in real time what remained to be done in terms of accessibility. I took the Must Haves and a few Could Haves and applied MOsCOW logic, holding individual interviews with each member of my team to discuss their approach to accessibility on the project.

This initial document was followed by task tracking on ClickUp by our producer, with more specific tasks for each GAG, allowing accessibility to be included throughout the project during each sprint for everyone.

Also, I created a document very early on in pre-production to bring together several resources that list methods, guidelines, and tools used for accessibility. I then proposed a V1 of dock to the other projects!

During the project, Ubisoft Chroma was made accessible to everyone, so I quickly learned how to use it to communicate with the two artists on the project, which allowed us to check color usage during the final weeks of the project and even include it on OBS during my playtests.

Ressources on general accessibility

Access list with the Game Accessibility Guidelines - MOsCOW

All the settings menu in Iridescent

During the production of Iridescent, I organized and planned two playtest sessions to verify several hypotheses. I organized everything from recruiting participants to planning and conducting the playtests in the school lab to analyzing the data and delivering the results to the team.

> The first session was held in early May with an alpha version of the game. Iridescent was playable from start to finish, with lots of placeholders and grey blocks. Some feedback and effects were missing, but the core experience was there. We wanted to verify whether each level was identifiable in terms of mood and atmosphere, the time it took to complete the game, the friction on the few puzzles present, the speed of the character controller, etc. To help me, I used two scales that I learned to use in psychology: the PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule) in its shortened form and the SAM (Self-Assessment Manikin) scale.
These scores, combined with the questionnaire conducted on Google Forms, allowed us to adjust several aspects of the game. First of all, the mood was well conveyed and understood by our players, even though the game wasn't finished yet! That was already a big win for us. We slightly reduced the speed of the character controller, added a guideline for backtracking in each level to make navigation between levels clearer, and more!

> A second session was organized in early June with a beta version of the game. All the must-have elements of the game were present, and we were in the process of adding some additional graphics and accessibility options (FOV, V-sync, etc.). This session mainly allowed us to balance the final puzzles, particularly the one in level 2, which was perceived as much too difficult. It was modified to be more explicit with a better introduction, while increasing the range at which the solution is triggered. We even added a small effect where, when you have found the right viewing angle for the solution but are not perfectly positioned on an axis, the game moves you very slightly so that the solution appears, greatly reducing friction.

> One of the failures of Iridescent, is its onboarding. We focused on the overall experience, mood, and polish of the game, not dwelling on its onboarding. After having the game tested by the jury and, in particular, at STUNFEST 2025 with an audience from all walks of life, nearly half of them got stuck for several minutes in the first room, not knowing what to do (which is detrimental to a 10- to 12-minute experience).

One solution would be to make a much more distinctive visual and audio cue for the crystal, perhaps even breaking it in one place to create an affordance effect and encourage the player to look in the right direction.

The first Excel playtest session combining the results from the Google form, PANAS, and SAM.