Background Packs in the Works 🖌️

With the latest release of Fall into Flow, the user/player has an opportunity to augment the canvas (video on Dailymotion). But "with great power comes..."

There were a couple of decisions that needed to be made:

The UI/UX is minimalist and that's one of the core strengths. Are custom backgrounds needed, cool, and what are the benefits?

Subjective answers always find their way into any decision making process, so it's (in the Ancient Aliens narrator voice) "A resounding yes!" for the former two points. The benefits outweighed not doing it, at all:

• With the feature enabled, the option is always available
• Users/players want customization
• Marketing and monetary opportunities
• Shows the project has life and other dimensions

Then there's the "great responsibility," between the user/player and the developer/designer. Changing the canvas, literally changes the game. It's no longer a purely "minimalist" endeavor. For example, the blocks on S6 aren't hidden anymore. The text throughout the entire playing area is white, so washed text is 100% possible.  

So for the second decision on design: The PSA (darker images work best or be mindful of the upper right/left corners) and Background Packs🙇‍♂️.

The benefits listed above will aid navigating the design and experience points of interests.

• With the feature enabled, the option is always available (pretty straightforward)
  
• Users/players want customization: Integrate tips/hints aka educate the users/players so they feel apart of the process and project
• Marketing and monetary opportunities: Create solutions (create custom wallpapers, create revenue stream, promote Itch.io and sponsorships, if Fall into Flow gains enough steam)
• Shows the project has life and other dimensions: Device wallpapers (the obvious), ingress into physical products

Background Packs will be custom digital art that can be used to enjoy Fall into Flow, with minimal disruption. In some cases, adding a border around the red blocks may be needed (leaning towards another yes), since they'll blend right into red images. Same goes for the white block.

Keep it locked! Thanks for engaging and thanks to the Itch.io team✊