I have been working with Choice Provisions on their web presence since before they were Choice Provisions, initially as a referral from my work on the Venus Patrol site’s mobile retrofit. Over the years I’ve helped them through a rebranding with their old Drupal site, a separate Choice Publishing website, a few domain name changes, and even a backend server for BIT.TRIP RERUNNER.
Sorry, I know that’s a lot of links, but we have a history!
So you can imagine my sorrow when I was asked to launch a new site for them in 2021 built by their publisher for a new game launch. Not that I was being replaced or anything like that—I’m still working with them after all!—but while the new site looked fantastic, it was built as a static React/Gatsby site that would require a developer to make updates to it when the time came to tease/launch a new game. I performed this task for them for several years, and you’d think some job security would be welcome, but I just couldn’t get the thought out of my head to rebuild the site in WordPress so that they would be put back in control of their web presence.
So, that’s what I did.
Overall, the goal was to replicate the static site’s design while “blockifying” as much as possible for maximum site editor control. This included the custom hero section slider with the CommanderVideo pagination, special controls for making images hover and overlap their sections, as well as a custom block for a pixelated “eye” that follows the mouse cursor that can be laid on top of any image (like the little green guy in the 3rd screenshot above)
However, I couldn’t help but include some of my own touch to the site. On every project I like to play with new fonts, and the playfulness of this design was a perfect fit for Nabla, an isometric colorized variable font that was just begging to be animated:
I also made the buttons shiny with a CSS-only animation of sparkles made from simple characters like ✴︎, ✦, & ✶, and the colors are completely configurable via CSS variables:
Not only is the front end fresh, the back end includes a customized game library management functionality that lets them control info like platforms, storefront links, release dates (general and per platform), and even the developer for games they have published.
Visit the site at choiceprovisions.com and visit the about page for some fun with hover animations!