My Role: Lead Game Designer

For this serious game, I suggested to my teammates the idea of an educational menstruation experience in contrast to the menstruation-based board game I was a part of earlier. My primary responsibility was to delegate tasks and spearhead group meetings to check on the progress of production. I researched and compiled the appropriate information that our group believed a middle-school audience would need to know about menstruation, as this age group is when menstruation usually appears.

I came up with the basis for the game mechanics and passed those onto the lead programmer. My co-designer also helped to finalize mechanics. My teammates also worked on asset creation and checked in with me for constructive feedback and to make sure the art was appropriate for the overall feel of Menstru-Mania.

The most challenging part of this experience was to make sure we discussed menstruating in an upbeat and positive manner. This topic is unfortunately taboo to some, and so our goal was to destigmatize the topic. We wanted to make sure menstruating did not come off as scary, and so I was also extremely careful in wording choice. The game featured several UI panels explaining the importance of changing products to promote good hygiene.