Web Design.
A web design project and process.
Witness to Mass Incarceration is a point-and-click pixel art game that tells the true story of Evie Litwok’s first day in prison.
The purpose of the website was to establish presence, showcase the indie developer team, and for general marketing.
What’s it for?
How do you capture the heavy themes of incarceration in a website?
How do you keep the tone serious, but instill a unique sense of ‘fun’?
What’s the challenge?
The dark color theme will generally indicate a somber tone. Incorporating game assets would create a game-like atmosphere. Creating imagery similar to office administration supplies would make the user feel as though they were looking through someone’s files.
The gameplay style is point-and-click, meaning the player must hover and click their mouse over elements to advance the storyline.
So, why not incorporate that into the website?
The Solution.
Interactive elements throughout the site.
The About page is inspired by the typical ‘Journal menu’ in games.
It features sticky notes that act as clickable buttons (with variable states), each leading to a different ‘page’ within the About section.
User Experience.
The Team page was imagined as ‘profiles’, and visualized through old-school filing folders with headshots and accompanying titles and notes.
The file folders were designed to ‘fall open’ as the user hovers, and ‘close up’, as their mouse leaves the frame, allowing them to focus on each individual profile.
Bringing Characters To Life.
In order to capture the correct ambience, the character sprite on the Home page was animated to be visibly breathing. The hanging light shining down on her is shaky and flickers, and the dust in the cell is very lightly illuminated.