Paper Planes’ Local Attractions delves into how design and architectural details shape the cities and towns we inhabit and travel to in India. For the publication, run by the same team as this agency, we wanted to use an infotainment approach that’s illustration-led and engaging to introduce details about Ballard Estate, a historic neighbourhood in Mumbai and the city’s first commercial precinct. The area is known for its beautifully constructed and uniform Edwardian buildings.

Ballard Peer, a side-scrolling game, consists of a quirky character that is embodied by the user. The character walks through the neighbourhood while jumping at every building to unfold little bits of information about it. Designed to be played on a desktop, the game emulates the look and feel of the 8-bit games we grew up with.

The process of creating this game began with rigorous research and an on-ground recce where the team went to Ballard Estate and hand-picked 18 different structures to highlight in the game. The structures were then illustrated and the character was designed and animated. Once the gameplay, information design and branding was in place, it all came together with SFX and background score by Noni-Mouse and was finally brought to life by our developer friends at Achieveee.

Click here to play the game.