Designing a Day in the
Cozy Rogue-Life
Development Studio - Fuzzybot Inc.
Publisher - Dreamhaven
Lead Senior UX Designer
3 Years 1 Month
Project Overview
Welcome to Fuzzybot!
In August of 2022, I joined the Fuzzybot team during Preproduction for the studio's first ambitious title. It was pitched as a genre hybrid game matching the recursive play loop of Action Roguelite titles to a meta progression structure in Cozy Life Sims. The slick term coined for this pairing was a Rogue-Life!
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My task was to tackle the UX design debt of the project thus far and champion development for the foundations of the User Experience. We would prove the viability of this Rogue-Life to our partners and have a ready plan to ship the full game in late 2024 on Steam, Xbox Series X/S, and Playstation 5.
Action Roguelite
Hades
Cozy Life Sim
Animal Crossing
The Game
Combining the Cozy Life Sim and Action Roguelite would make a more rewarding and interesting outer loop to the popular Roguelite formula. Players go out on tough missions and return to their towns with rescued NPCs, new crafting materials, new recipes, etc. Players would Fight to Build so that they could Build to Fight.
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Lynked's major details included:
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Steam PC, Steamdeck Compatible
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Xbox Series X/S and Playstation 5
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Single Player and Co-op
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Multiplayer Support for 6 players
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Unique Grapple Hook Verb
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Buildable Town and Day Life Sim
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Full Roguelite Combat with Campaign
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Live Service Strategy
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Daily Quests, Seasonal Events
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Regular Content and DLC Expansions
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Planned Timeline
The plan was to complete and release Lynked in approximately 2 years of development following a traditional deployment into a live service model.
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Year 1 Preproduction
Continue experimentation and exploration of the title's Rogue-Life concept. Prove the Cozy Life Sim progression paired to the Roguelite 'run style' combat.
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Year 2 Production to Release
Full development to a launch ready 1.0 version of the game. Release the title with initial core content on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Playstation 5.
Live Service Post Release
Encourage a long tail product lifecycle with regular content and expansions on core systems. Grow the value proposition to keep the game evergreen for new and existing players.
Would you like to read more?
I've split a more detailed Case Study into its own presentation for a deeper dive into the development journey for Lynked. It details the UX challenges I worked on as part of this journey and the learnings gathered along the way.
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To skip the Case Study and review work samples and responsibilities during Preproduction and Production, please scroll on!
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UX Discovery and Preproduction Sample Work
Building Player Empathy with UX Research and UX Workshops.
Conducting and parsing User Research initiatives to collect data and find insights for actionable strategy and feature proposals.
Planning Features with Design Specs, Flowcharting, Sketching and Storyboarding. Visuals to help us zero in on the problems and quickly vet solutions.
Hardening ideas and solutions into Wireframes, Wireflows, and Interaction Designs to plan out how features could work and build consensus with the team about how they should work.
Documenting UX Feature Specs to capture the important details we need to help us build, learn, and iterate with prototypes.
Prototyping in Unreal UMG to get usable interfaces and protofeatures into the playtest queue. Observing and noting feedback on playability, desirability, and frictions encountered during real play scenarios and player task tests.
Production Work Samples
Front End Menu Systems
I was responsible for the full Front End Menu system and utility widget systems related to handling meta application features. This included all of the screens and features including the Title Screens, Saving and Loading, Multiplayer Game Screens, and Options Menu.
Options Menu
The Options Menus system was a set of modular widgets I designed and built to handle features for Gameplay Options, Localization, Accessibility, Display, and Controls Mappings. This Menu System was adaptable based on where in the game it was accessed, changing the options tabs and items based on factors like Multiplayer status, Game state, and Platform.
Multishop Template System
A challenge for Lynked's development story was content and feature quantity. We needed to devise ways to build many screens and features with similar needs relatively quickly.
The Multishop Template system was one of my designed solutions to help us tackle the feature backlog. This template system allowed us to build multiple shop-style screens with a 'swiss army' knife of modular widgets. With these modular widgets, we covered Shopping Screens, Crafting Screens, Upgrade Screens, and Cosmetics Screens allowing this system to handle 8 separate user interfaces encompassing 24 features for player economy.
Banner of the Spark Skill Upgrades
This Screen constituted one of the most important meta progression systems in the game. Players could purchase Skills and Buffs from this screen similar to a Skill Tree. Because of its level of importance to the player journey, we wanted to put special details and a unique presentation in its screens. By making it look special, we anticipated players would take notice of it more often and place more importance on it in memory.
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HUD Ping System
To help players coordinate and message information to each other, we created a set of features to allow players to ping one another about important items and powerups. This system handled highlighting the item and creating HUD compass elements for players to follow. Players could place ping indicators on Weapons, Health Pickups, Energy Pickups, and Treasure Chests as these items were observed to be part the largest part of the multiplayer team talk.
GameShare via GameChat
When we chose to port to the Switch 2 for its launch, we had an opportunity to leverage some of the Switch 2's new unique features. GameShare, which allows Switch 2 and Switch consoles to connect to one another to play games together, gave us the opportunity to add a Couch Coop play mode for Lynked.
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I was the point person for development and UX of this particular feature, creating the screens and flows for players to connect in the Front End menu system and begin playing together in the special game mode launched with Couch Coop.
Title Performance and Outcome
Lynked was released on Steam Early Access in October of 2024 and had a 1.0 launch release in May of 2025 on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Playstation 5. In September 2025 we released the Switch and Switch 2 versions of the game on the Nintendo marketplace.
Unfortunately, Lynked: Banner of the Spark did not hit the sales targets necessary for its investment. After our release on the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, our studio was forced to downsize to remain operational.​ My position would be among those that was necessarily cut in the scale down.
Despite our struggles with unit sales, our audience responded well to what we offered. Review ratings on Steam were strongly at 80% Mostly Positive and that reflected on the Playstation Store with a 4.5 Star rating. They praised Lynked as a 'hidden gem' striking the right balance between action and relaxing gameplay.​​
