Mario Chuman
Planet Pilkey
Description
Planet Pilkey was a cross platform app where Scholastic used to push the bestselling properties by author Dav Pilkey. Players could create a character and explore the city from the Dog Man franchise and meet characters from it and the Captain Underpants books.
Planet Pilkey existed for several years, updating with new excerpts, games, and quizzes from new releases until it hit its end of life cycle. Many elements and lessons from Planet Pilkey went directly into the development of Scholastic’s follow up project: Home Base.
Summary of Contributions
When I first joined Scholastic, Planet Pilkey had been released for quite some time so they were tasked with minor content updates. Planet Pilkey’s in-game currency was earned by completing quizzes which was an interactive way to encourage kids to read and engage with Scholastic’s books. I was initially responsible for reading the books, creating quiz questions, writing the copy, seeking editorial approval, and incorporating them into the game.
As Home Base was nearing release, the Home Base team was seeking to add Dog Man content for its 1.0 release. I was responsible for designing a simple HTML5 game that would initially live in Planet Pilkey and be easily ported to Home Base. The game would have to be small in scope and have to both fit in the style of Home Base and Planet Pilkey. I was the co-lead for the design of Tagging Supa Bodies, a fast paced “whac-a-mole” game for both Planet Pilkey and Home Base.
Finally, as the end of life cycle came for Planet Pilkey, I was responsible for its end of life update. This involved designing a flow to make users to back up their data to be able to play the game offline and porting the relevant information onto the Scholastic website, where it continues to live to this day. While Planet Pilkey may no longer exist as a game, its spirit continues to live on in planetpilkey.com where I continue to update with new content along with other kid and adult facing Scholastic websites.
