FI - Features Enriching Gameplay
Context
Family Island is a top-grossing mobile simulation game where players build and expand their Home Island while exploring new Adventure Islands weekly. By 2025, the game’s core loop was highly engaging but began showing signs of player fatigue.
Players wanted:
Faster progression
More variety in gameplay
Better reward systems to sustain long-term motivation
As UX/UI Team Lead, I led the design of two meta features aimed at deepening engagement and enhancing progression without disrupting the core experience players loved.
Product Design Lead
UX/UI Design
Micro-Interactions
My Role
Company
Moon Active
Slow Progression – advancement was tied mainly to new weekly Adventure Islands.
While successful, the existing gameplay loop had limitations:
The Challenge
Repetitive Actions – similar tasks across events reduced excitement.
Limited Rewards – players had few opportunities to earn meaningful resources outside core mechanics.
We asked how can we introduce new mechanics that add depth and motivation, while staying seamless within the core loop?
Enhance the core gameplay by introducing fresh, engaging challenges.
Create Adventure Islands-loops where new features both feed and benefit from existing mechanics.
Deliver meaningful rewards that motivate players to explore and invest more time.
Design Goals
Feature 1: Treasure Temple
Players earn mattocks in Adventure Islands, unlocking access to the mystical Treasure Temple.
Inside, they break tiles to uncover hidden Fossils - collecting them rewards energy for the core & adventure islands game and opens deeper temple levels.
Progression is visualized with a Grand Prize progress bar: each completed temple brings players closer to a major reward.
Concept
UX Process
Mapped player journeys to identify moments of fatigue.
Ran heuristic evaluations to pinpoint UI friction in existing reward systems.
Defined player motivations: exploration, collection, and anticipation of rewards.
Early concepts explored grid-based boards for clarity.
Designed interactive tile-breaking animations for tactile feedback.
Tested layouts balancing thematic visuals (Aztec temple) with functional UI elements.
Wireframes & Iterations
Integrated seasonal reskins to align with events and keep the feature fresh.
Crafted fossil designs to evoke curiosity and narrative depth.
Visual Design
In this reskin, the familiar Treasure Temple mechanic transforms into a tranquil lake exploration. Instead of breaking tiles, players select floating crates drifting on water. With each level, the camera gradually pulls back to reveal a wider river filled with more crates, amplifying the sense of scale and discovery. At the final stage, players unlock a hidden island bursting with rewards - tying the visual theme to a satisfying narrative payoff.
Seasonal Reskin Example: Bay of Fortune
In the “Touchdown” reskin, the Treasure Temple mechanic takes on a playful sports theme. Here, players pick from golden Touchdown cards instead of breaking tiles. Each card selection helps them collect items displayed on the left side of the screen. Once all items are gathered, an adorable rooster mascot runs onto the field and scores a touchdown for the player’s purple team - adding a delightful narrative moment. As players progress through levels, the number of cards increases, offering more opportunities to uncover rewards and heightening the excitement with each stage.
Seasonal Reskin Example: Touchdown
Additionally, the feature was integrated with the Daily Tasks system. Each time players collected rings from the Touchdown rounds, their progress also contributed to completing daily missions on a separate screen. This encouraged players to return regularly, earn extra rewards, and ultimately aim to complete all Touchdowns for even bigger prizes.
Outcome
Created a “game within a game” that added layers of discovery.
Strengthened the core loop:
Golden mattocks → Treasure Temple → Energy boosts → Adventure Islands.Provided opportunities for narrative storytelling and monetization through seasonal content.
Early metrics showed players engaging with Treasure Temple sessions 20% longer than similar side features.
Feature 2: Merge-2
Merge-2 invites players into a magical forest where they use Energy Capsules (earned in Adventure Islands or other in-game features) to merge items and unlock new objects.
The goal: complete item requests to progress through levels toward a Grand Prize, all while expanding their in-game collection.
Concept
Benchmarked popular Merge games to identify best practices in board design and player flow.
Defined the interaction model: drag-to-merge mechanics with clear visual feedback.
UX Process
Wireframes & Iterations
Designed layouts balancing complex merge chains with clean, intuitive UI.
Developed onboarding flows to introduce new players to Merge mechanics.
Lush, vibrant environment contrasting with Adventure Islands to give players a fresh sensory experience.
Library system for tracking discovered items and encouraging collection-driven behavior.
Visual Design
Introduced a familiar yet exciting mechanic that encouraged longer play sessions.
Established another event-loop:
Energy Capsules → Merge board → Adventure islands resources → Adventure Islands.Designed for scalability: the Merge framework supported new board designs and seasonal content.
Outcome
Deeper Engagement – Both features extended session times and gave players meaningful mid-term goals.
The Impact
Stronger event-Loops - Resources flowed seamlessly between core gameplay and adventure islands features.
Increased Monetization Potential - New entry points for In-App Purchases (e.g., boosters, skins).
Retention during adventure islands periods improved by an estimated 12%.
Led the UX strategy and UI design process end-to-end for both features.
Designed (together with the UX/UI team) and iterated on wireframes, flows, and high-fidelity UI.
Collaborated closely with Product Owners, game designers, artists (concept & content artists, animators and tech-artists), and developers to ensure seamless integration.
Oversaw implementation and provided UX & UI QA to fine-tune interactions.
My Role & Contributions
Integrating event features into live games requires balance - enhancing depth without overwhelming players.
Seamless loops between adventure islands and features are key to maintaining engagement.
Visual storytelling and tactile UX can make new mechanics feel native to existing worlds.