This was the second project I was a part of at Media.Monks. eOne approached Media.Monks and wanted to bring My Little Pony into the Metaverse, as well as promote their new My Little Pony series coming to Netflix. Our goal was to bring My Little Pony and Maretime Bay into the Metaverse and give players the ability to spend a day with the Mane 5.

Our goal was to bring the My Little Pony Mane 5 to Roblox and give users a unique experience unlike most Roblox experiences. Players can become their own customized pony and receive free official UGC items. There are 5 mini games, one for each character, as well as a faithful adaptation of Maretime Bay, the setting from the show.

My first project at MediaMonks was with Duolingo's Duo-Jam, where I was initially assigned simple tasks such as game testing and bug spotting. However, with time and experience I was entrusted with much more responsibility. I was given the task to design and create the meadow for a game with the character Hitch — a fun-filled hide and seek adventure where 3-30 critters hide in the forest and users have to find them.

This was a huge opportunity and I took it seriously. I spent considerable time studying the source material and went through several iterations of wireframes and design ideas.

I created three versions of the meadow. I wanted something simple yet vast and different for users. It was an honor to have full creative control of building this meadow — it takes up 40-50% of the entire world.

The target audience is five-year-old girls. During playtesting we discovered they found the game challenging, which prompted us to rethink our approach.

I drew on a childhood memory of Sonic Adventure XD, where completing a stage opened a door to new challenges. We applied this concept to our game: starting with a smaller space in stage one made it easy and rewarding to find the ten critters, then opening up a new section of the forest in stage two, requiring players to find twenty critters while using the same space. We randomized spawn areas to prevent predictability.

I presented this idea to my team in a pitch deck and they were thrilled. This approach was implemented in two of the five games, which was a significant accomplishment as a new hire.

After speaking with our client, they wanted a simpler demo stage setup:

We needed UI responses that felt on brand. To do this we watched a lot of the show and thought deeply about what each member of the Mane Five would say.

Each character profile was designed to match the show's visual language.

As the weeks went on I was given more and more creative control over the world. I was put in charge of the forest and meadow and all the landscaping. I kept everything canon, going through all available My Little Pony content, making detailed notes with my team and designing the world as faithfully as possible to the show.

I designed and created 75% of the world, which was an honor and a pleasure. The more I attended meetings with my team, the more questions and input I contributed. For example, I pitched the idea of placing one pony at the total west end of the world, rewarding players who explored. That is the direction we moved with.

This is the final version of the Meadow. Words cannot express what this means to me. It took many iterations and versions, but I can completely own this work.

I started as a Creative Dev and was hired as a UX/UI Designer by the end of the project. Throughout this work I gained the confidence to ask questions, make suggestions, and handle the disappointment of having some ideas rejected. Working with Hasbro taught me that good messaging for children requires constant attention, from character responses to ensuring all characters wore knee pads and protective gear.

Weekend projections were 350K visits. We hit 1 million within 24 hours. The event reached 7M+ visits and 4M impressions, and successfully promoted the Netflix show, which stayed at number 1 for over one week.

The work was featured in ADWEEK, Super Parent, The Drum, PR News Wire, and several other outlets. Submitted to the Eventex Awards 2023.