Design Stories

The Creation of BebeBoop

When the health of declined rapidly, I left work taking care of her 24x7. was less acrobatic as the illness progressed. She demanded more lap time instead of watching the backyard or playing hide and seek with those once her favorite shipping boxes attacking imaginary enemies. With on my lap all the time, I wished we could still do something fun together easing our mind of counting days and time. There were a few mobile games for cats but they did not catch 's attention while no mobile games were designed for pet parents to play with their furry kids. We knew it was unlikely for us to finish a mobile game in time to play with her but we hoped other parents of furry kids could. This was the beginning of BebeBoop.

Don't Forget Me

We started developing BebeBoop when we left our full-time work. The original idea was to develop a multiplayer mobile game that was fun and simple to play without reading a dictionary of instructions or a steep learning curve suitable for all ages. While researching accessibility needs with on my lap, I realized BebeBoop could not be a true mobile game for family of all ages without including , she was part of our family. We had to extend our research beyond human accessibility to pets.

How Things Work

BebeBoop seems like a 'typical' tapping game at a glance but the design behind every gameplay ("Poster") is based on extensive research of colors, shapes, sound, motion ... etc. to meet accessibility needs for both human, including those who may have visual limitations, and pets. Understanding different pets may be attracted to different speeds, motions, sounds, and shapes in different sizes, individual Posters are designed uniquely combining speed adjustment, music, and sound effect control, so one or more "Posters" should catch your pets' attention.

Art and Music - Posters

There is always a story behind each Poster. Our game designs and strategy are unique with multi-cultural themes presented as a wall of Posters. Most Posters were inspired by our furry kids and extended family from our backyard. Our music compositions, choice of instruments and sound effects, are composed, arranged, and designed matching its theme. They give a good breadth of art and music experience without any abrupt changes which may scare some human or furry kids. You will not find another mobile game with such unique and original art and music for individual gameplays with different stories in a single game.

Participation, Challenge, vs. Rewards

Have you thought about a family mobile game allowing users to play together on the same device, just like a board game, without staring at individual screens? How would a mobile game work when users could never lose yet be challenging and rewarding? It was a big challenge as pets or pre-school kids would only 'tappy tap tap' indiscriminately or as a relaxation therapy otherwise. This is why our gameplays focus on participation instead of competition with the reward system to exchange bonus points for avatar accessories. The avatar idea was also created for playing solo as a companion and encouraging creativities putting on different animated accessories. We have included a rare avatar feature, photo booth, allowing users to share their creativities with others.

All About Screen Time

Most games provide a single gameplay with various levels (usually a mix of speed and difficulty repeatedly); however, BebeBoop has 16 unique gameplays ("Posters") currently available and all of them have to be unique providing a broad range of attention capturing designs for families of all ages and pets. All of the Posters are designed to finish within a couple minutes as a quick 'pick-me-up' game in regular mode while marathon mode is meant for parties and road trips to extend the game without restarting (most pets obviously would not know how to restart a game, although we believe some may).

Beyond Screen Time

Outside the mobile game, we designed extra activities such as box folding, coloring (both small and large prints), origami to use the coloring print as up-cycling with a personal touch, karaoke ... etc. available for free to promote creativity and interaction with families and friends.

Keep Everyone Safe

All of our designs, including characters, avatar accessories, game assets, music, sound effects, animation ... etc. are original created and developed by BumbleMeow. Despite the amount of game assets, actions, and moving objects for individual Posters, we managed to optimize BebeBoop to insanely low, about 100mb required storage, so more users can enjoy our game without additional downloads, internet connection, or log-in. Our games do not collect personal data to keep your families privacy safe. This also helps reduce battery consumption which is a common issue with many mobile games.

Still Awake? You're One of Us!

If you are still reading this without falling asleep, we believe you are one of us who cares about mobile game design and development. We hope our design story and our games may inspire new or struggling game developers, designers and artists to think about an honest question, 'What is your true meaning of developing a game?'.

The Creation of CookieAMA

CookieAMA is a spin-off from the BebeBoop game based on two dim sum Posters, Dim Sum Bao Edition and Dim Sum Hong Kong Edition with fortune cookies as the obstacles of the games. While testing BebeBoop, those cookie messages popping up with different expressions cracked us up, so we thought, what if we made a question and answer mobile game with a fortune cookie outfit crossing over with BebeBoop characters?

How Things Work? AI?

How to answer a question without knowing it? Even AI requires an input to produce an answer. Instead of predicting your questions, we designed and developed logic predicting patterns as to answer questions either directly or indirectly with the least number of tries. Certain limitations, such as classic fortune cookie messages for learning Chinese, are taken into account as to determine which best meets the criteria for what should be drawn next. While CookieAMA cannot answer questions precisely (or it does?), it is meant to be a funny game filled with TV and movie quotes, tech jokes, positive messages ... etc. for parties or passing time. Here is a demo

Is the System Rigged or Am I Bad Luck? 😭

Users of a popular mobile game often complain about getting way too many duplicates thinking the system is 'rigged'. Random selection logic is a tough cookie even AAA games stumble on it at times. True random does not work well in practice as most people perceive random as 'not getting duplicates' or 'less duplicates'. Whether with huge sample sizes (which is not feasible for local mobile games) or quantity limits in nature (such as rolling dice), using standard algorithms leads to poor user experience despite some may argue it is legally and logically acceptable. There are many ways to fine tune random logic; however, our design and proprietary random logic work synchronously giving a natural feel of 'duplicates' without experiencing any extremes.

Instant Replay and Sharing

CookieAMA comes with some special cookies with different visual and sound effects. We added a feature for users to 're-crack' the cookie (i.e. instant replay) in case one missed it the first time or it is too funny not to show to others. We also include a sharing feature so users may ask someone else to help picking a cookie or save funny messages that they would like to keep or share with others.