The shop feature of Cogshel was really important as it contributed significantly to the reward system and motivation for the player to continue looking after their pet tiger. Since we only had a few months of development time, we decided to keep the shop simple with just 5 items and two categories - food and toys. These satisfied the traditional pet simulator genre whilst still being within our production scope.
To keep it simple, we set the prices to increment by 10 coins for each item. The lowest priced item is 10 coins, and the highest is 50. This makes it achievable for players to still buy cheaper items even if they don’t have time to do multiple activities. Based on playtesting, we also gave players 100 free coins when they first enter the game.
ITEMS
Items were also determined by feedback during the v2 playtesting session. We asked which items they’d like to see in the game and picked the top five for both categories.
I created the sign as an arrow to direct players where to go. The version on the right is the final asset which has warmer undertones to match the colour palette better.
Since there were already several assets in this scene, I wanted to keep the UI as minimal as possible. I used bright colours, blue and pink, to make sure they are easily visible. The X icon on the right side was the original back button, however, after playtesting, we changed it to the arrow asset on the left. This kept everything more coherent and uniformed throughout different scenes.
