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freya-development · 4 months

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Worldbuilding

All of my design work for the game has been based around required worldbuilding. I took a lot of inspiration from the platformer "Wildfire," a 2D platformer in which you play as a witch trying to reach the queen of the kingdom. The fantasy elements of the game really caught my attention and stuck out enough for it to remain in my memory long after I played it. The pixel art style was also something that I really liked and heavily inspired how I made my sprites. For worldbuilding and the concept of a wider game as a whole, I was inspired by the game "Papers, Please" in the sense that you as the player have the option to interfere and make moral decisions that influence the overall path of the story. Combined with the platformer gamemode which we were limited to, I decided on what the premise of a wider game would be alongside the ongoing story within the world.

Hundreds of millenia ago, the universe began when a dormant god finally awoke for the first time. Unable to contain omnipotent power of opposite nature in one being, it split itself into two - light and dark, opposites in every manner. The energy given off by this transformation led to the birth of what we know as reality. Much, much later, once planets had formed and civilisations had been built, both gods continued to clash, and so did their followers on their behalf. The Light and its followers were eventually able to win the battle through a curse that remains shrouded in mystery. Its opposite was banished wholly from any light as a result, only able to exude power on a new moon or during an eclipse. Though defeated, the Dark's followers continued to work in the shadows and have finally been able to work around the curse by bringing about a permanant eclipse, allowing the dark to run rampant and summon forth shadowy creatures bound to its will, the likes of which are almost entirely myth. The player, however, plays as a postmaster. She doesn't particularly care that the world is almost ending, she has a job to do and is determied to do it properly regardless of the circumstances. As the game progresses, however, some of the delivery addresses assigned to the player are more than questionable and the contents of the letters you deliver have the potential to help uncover what really happened when the Dark was banished and what allowed for it to rise again, should you choose to open them despite your code of conduct.

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freya-development · 4 months

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Environment Design

For the environment, I wanted to go with a fantasy setting. To settle on one specific to the game level, I went through some quick thumbnails.

I found that I liked the first and the third the most (although if the game were to be expanded beyond one level, others could definitely also work) and decided to combine them when drawing concept art.

Preferably I didn't want the environment to be straining on the eyes, so I settled on softer and cooler colours much like I did with the protagonist design with hints of warmth to indicate light. With this in mind, I then went on to use the concept art to create a backdrop usable in unity by taking the colour palette and trees, and then making them into a simpler background. I also wanted it to be parallax ready, so I exported each layer of trees from photoshop as separate images. This allowed me to load them into unity and offset them on the Z axis by 1 each, which created the desired effect.

I also made a looping version so that the background could repeat without looking strange.

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freya-development · 4 months

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Enemy Design

For the enemies, I knew that I wanted to make something simple that also toned in well with the worldbuilding I'd made in my head. For this, I decided to go with silhouetted, shadow-like figures.

I started with some basic shape ideas. I knew that I wanted the enemies to be humanoid - they exist as animated shadows and therefore have to take on a form from somewhere, but I had to figure out in what way. Experimentation with different shapes quickly led me to a few designs that I really liked, however I untimately decided to go with one of the more simple ones for readability when it came to sprites.

I also doodled a few other ideas just for extra worldbuilding on top of what I'd already come up with.

After being happy with the design for the enemy creature, I started working on sprites. The simple shapes definitely came in handy as I found that the sprites were relatively easy to animate in regards to walk cycle and idle animation, and the formlessness mentioned in the concept art pages allowed for a fun death animation.

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freya-development · 7 months

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Character Design

Our first Games Art assignment of the year was to begin to develop designs and worldbuilding for a basic platformer video game which we will be reskinning.

The first thing that I thought of was a basic concept. My favourite genre is high fantasy closely followed by sci-fi, which I wanted to lean into. My initial idea followed a non-magical protagonist in a magical world, in which the world's innate magic had gone wild for an undecided reason, spawning monsters from non-sentient things with magical properties, such as slime, enchanted trees and so on. At this point, I was still unsure as to how I would incorporate sci-fi elements.

Following this, I started making some basic silhouettes for body types. I didn't go through too many iterations of this as I found one which I was happy with quite quickly.

Next I moved onto some more more complex silhouettes in which I experimented with outfits without too much regard for detail. At first, I started experimenting with more modern clothing styles, as I still wanted to leave room for science fiction within the world. As I continued, however, I found I was more drawn to the fantasy elements and was struggling to incorporate a second genre, therefore I opted to lean into the fantastical armoured designs instead. I also added small horns to the silhouettes during this, as I found I liked the shape of them alongside the longer ears.

My original idea for the story evolved as I was designing outfits and their silhouettes. I knew from the start that I'd wanted the protagonist to have rocket boots, as the jumps in the platformer game went very high with not much attention paid to gravity. As I'm not a programmer, I decided to lean into it and incorporate the long jump time into the character design.

Adding bags to some of the basic designs gave me the idea of a postman or delivery person due to the envelope-shaped pattern I added for the flap of the bag. I quickly decided that this was something I was set on as it inspired further ideas for what the overall concept of the game could be.

I went through several iterations of potential outfits before deciding, which I did through process of elimination. 1 and 2 I decided against due to their more modern looks, which I didn't think would fit the setting very well. 5 was because the design was too angular and almost spiky, connoting hostility, which was not what I wanted. 6 I liked a lot but had concerns about how to animate the skirt for a character that would be descending mid-air from a tall jump, so I decided against it. This left 3, 3.5 and 4, which I was really torn between. My reasoning for picking 4 was because of the supposedly hazardous world that the protagonist lives in, a more armoured approach would make sense.

This then helped me develop my concept further, in which the protagonist shifted from a generic hero character to a very dedicated postmaster whose job is to deliver letters and parcels despite the dangerous state of magic throughout the world. I also considered giving them two prosthetic legs with rocket boosters built in instead of just boots, which they have due to a previous accident on the clock. I still like this idea, however including it depends on how clear I am able to make it in the sprite.

I then went through a few quick hairstyles. These were easier to narrow down - I decided against something long and flowy, such as long braids or loose hair, both due to animation capability as well as practicality. Somebody with a dangerous job would not have loose hair in case it should get in their eyes, caught somewhere or pulled on in combat. This left tighter updo styles. My current favourite is 3 as it still has shape whilst keeping out of the protagonist's way, though I also like 4 and 5, so those two still have the potential to be part of the finalised design.

Lastly, I drew a quick portrait of the character combining some of the parts that I'd drawn, including armour and hair. I drew facial features based on what I thought could match their personality, so I opted for softer, rounder features to come across as friendly and outgoing.

This isn't necessarily the final design for my game's protagonist, however I wanted to come up with a first iteration to have somewhere to go from.

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