Toca Boca Days
Tasks System
My Role: Feature Owner, System & Tools Designer
Team Size: 10+
A background quest system designed to boost retention by adding subtle structure and rewards to the social, open-play without disrupting freeform play.
Responsibilities
Designed the full Task System and led implementation.
Balanced accessibility for multiple player archetypes.
Wrote narrative framing and guidelines for whimsical, Toca Boca–style task prompt descriptions.
Conducted playtests, analyzed data and iterated design based on results.
Collaborated with coders to ensure scalable implementation and user-friendly dev tools.
Walkthrough
Brief / Challenge
The game needed optional short-term goals to guide players through the experience and increase retention.
Without them, the game loop risked becoming aimless and shallow for some players.
Tasks had to be engaging but lightweight, avoiding grind and preserving the open-play sandbox.
Design Approach
1. Identifying the problem
After onboarding, players lacked direction.
Players craved a sense of purpose, something to nudge them forward.
2. Intrusive vs. subtle
Prominent tasks: strong guidance, but risked disrupting the sandbox and feeling too artificial.
Subtle tasks: supported play without overshadowing the sandbox.
We landed on the subtle approach, letting tasks complement rather than dictate play.
3. Avoiding grind
No “Collect 2/5” counters, felt too artificial, turns play into chores.
Instead, we made inspiring, riddle-like descriptions that feel playful and thematic.
Example: Instead of “Greet 1/2 cat ornaments”
This made tasks feel like small mysteries rather than grindy checklists, aligning well with the games creative vision.
4. Shared & inclusive experience
Tasks were simple enough to be completed casually by accident, so all players (hardcore and casual) benefitted.
All players received the same daily tasks, sparking collaboration.
This turned daily tasks into a shared community activity, not just individual chores.
System Design & Tools
To make the Tasks System scalable and designer-friendly, we combined three building blocks for our internal tools:
Location areas: Custom bounding boxes set up at key locations in the game world (like beach, plaza, pier etc). They anchor tasks to specific contexts and are used as triggers to register player actions.
Player actions: core verbs players can do in the game (like jumping, swimming, use tool etc).
Modifiers: conditions layered on top (like duration, count, time of day etc)
By mixing and matching these, we could quickly create a wide range of varied tasks:
“Eat a pizza slice while sitting on the pier during night”
“Skate on the beach in the morning”
“Use a dance emote at the city plaza during the day”
This gave us:
Scalable variety without heavy dev work.
Creative freedom for designers to frame even simple actions in inspiring ways.
Future-proofed with a foundation to expand with new verbs or conditions over time.
Visual reference for coders, mapping out supported and unsupported task combinations.
A glimpse at the tool we made and used: a node-based tool to create new tasks by mixing locations, actions, and modifiers.
Reflection
Presentation and language matters. By framing the tasks as inspiring riddles, we transformed them from chores into playful nudges, keeping the tone aligned with the game’s core vision. Investing time into creating user-friendly development tools for easily adding new daily tasks ensures that players always have fresh content, maintaining long-term engagement. These thoughtfully designed tasks not only helped reduce social anxiety but also gave players a stronger sense of purpose, ultimately boosting retention.
