While I’m constructing a game at heart, I wanted to focus
largely on creating a very strong style that is recognisable as I am actually
specialising in 2D artwork. I looked at two games that achieved this task
successfully:
Outland
Outland is an Xbox Live Arcade title where you play as a man
guided by visions of an ancient hero who
had mastered the power of light and dark to seal away two warring sisters. The
gameplay itself is akin to that which I want my game to create with platforming,
dodging and occasional battle taking place across 2D environments.
The Visual style is exceptional, with the character,
platforms and creatures themselves being largely just a black figures, that as
the game progresses get influenced by either blue or red lines that form
intricate designs. These designs are like ancient drawings or patterns but also
on close inspection form things like belt buckles and trouser detail of the
protagonist.
The backgrounds are another area where this game’s visual
style shines through. Actually constructed from flowing silhouettes layered
atop each other, the background colour slowly pulsates and changes, affecting
the basic silhouettes. The way they are layered and how they scroll through
with the player works – and because of the simple base and focus around
colours, it means that much contrasted moods can be created just by a simple
hot/ cold switch.
Playing this has made me consider actions like Wall Jumping
being included in the game in addition to the types of adversity the player
might face – in addition to of course using simple silhouetted shapes as an integral
part of the style.
Bastion
This was very much down the other end of the spectrum as far
as style was concerned – but not meaning it wasn’t as equally pleasing aesthetically
as Outland. In Bastion you play as a character dubbed ‘The Kid’ by the narrator
as he traverses various areas of the world that have been ruined by an event
known as ‘The Calamity’. The gameplay is
an isometric action game with no platforming (so did not hold any research purpose
as far as that was concerned) but one of the things that I wanted to look at
was the visual style. Bastion is a vibrant game that is crystal clear but yet
has a hand painted look to it. The world is constructed from a number of
destroyable pots, caravans, boxes and walls – all of which are very well
coloured. But one thing I noticed from the game was the heavy reuse of gaming assets
but with slight hue changes and rotations. However in saying this, it took
looking at the game from the design perspective to notice this, making me
mentally note that this is a technique I could implement in my game should I
want to quickly construct levels. However unlike bastion which has a faux 3D
isometric view which it would be easy to do this, a sidescroller would be a
little harder – especially if I tried the hand painted look.
Extra
Bunny My Honey (Yes…A children’s
picture book…)
Because of the narrative of my idea in that you play as a
girl moving through books, I tried to think of ways to make that more interesting,
fun and vibrant – finally coming to the idea of looking at children’s picture
books as inspiration, as they tell their stories largely though the visuals.
Searching for different picture books lead to loads of different styles but one
I settled on for how I envisioned the Tortoise and the Hare level colours would
look was Anita Jeram’s: ‘’Bunny My Honey’’.
Image Sourced from: http://www.readeo.com/wp-content/uploads/Bunny_My_Honey_Cover.jpg
)
After looking at all of these visual materials, I created a
simple mock screenshot of how the game could look:
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