Chris Natsuume, Creative Director:
The original idea behind Zen Fashion was to make a follow-up to Magic Lanterns. However, we wanted to play with a new game mechanic, since we felt there were enough games out there using the collapse-style gameplay we used in Magic Lanterns. We were playing with the idea of dragging a line across matching items, and once we did a brief prototype, we were convinced that we could make a pretty cool game out of it.

While we were doing this, we discussed with Playware, a Singaporean development studio that produced all of the art for Magic Lanterns, the idea of “growing up” the character of Hana. We wanted to let her go outside of Japan and go see some of the rest of Asia. Once we started on that, we suddenly had all of these beautiful new designs for the character, and it took on a real life of its own. We loved the fact that all of the designs had beautiful traditional costumes, and thought that this was an interesting way of dealing with Asian culture without creating the classic casual game stereotypes of egg-rolls, rickshaws, and ninjas. We wanted to celebrate traditional culture, but in a way that was refined and modern. As such, we hit upon the idea of a young fashion designer in Asia discovering her roots. This story has allowed us to capture the beauty of Asia and share it in a game that is both beautiful and still very current.

But beyond the story, I’m also very pleased that Zen Fashion is probably Boomzap’s most addictive game so far. We have actually had to shut down the computer in business meetings with publishers, because we couldn’t get them to concentrate on the meeting once we started the game. That’s always a good sign.

Adrian Tung, Designer and Programmer:
Developing, and then immediately trying out the new features we developed was an incredibly fun experience (and sometimes dangerously too much fun, as “testing” time started to suck away “development” time on occasion). But that’s the cool thing about the game – what’s simply a shape/color-matching game becomes an interesting, addictive experience about getting the largest sets possible, and letting loose a lot of crazy powers from the clothes you’ve collected.

The base technology behind this block-matching game had already been tried and tested in previous Boomzap games like Hoyle Enchanted Puzzles and Magic Lanterns, so most of the groundwork had already been set up. Most of the design and development work went into making the clothes and powers system work in a fun yet balanced way, adding a suitable storyline and city progression to the basic game, and then basically playing the game continuously to see what else there is to add.