Seisei is a school project, a mobile game, that we had to make in the span of 4 weeks. We had a theme to include in the process, which is puzzle games, as well as a fun way to find inspiration.
We were randomly given emojis that we could find ideas from.
Our assigned emoji was a ♥ HEART ♥ .
Our assigned emoji was a ♥ HEART ♥ .
GAME DEMO
EARLY STAGES
With a HEART as our emoji, we had a large array of possibilities.
We brainstormed on a Miro board, where we took 15 minutes for everyone to place their ideas on post-its.
We brainstormed on a Miro board, where we took 15 minutes for everyone to place their ideas on post-its.
I used my typical workflow, where I first write down everything the word HEART reminds me of; one's soul, organic matter, open-heart surgery... etc.
Then, I write down short gameplay, universe ideas and place down existing games we could take inspiration from.
Then, I write down short gameplay, universe ideas and place down existing games we could take inspiration from.
With everyone's ideas, we ended up with a game inspired by Japanese folklore and themes of afterlife and demons.
The image shows the artistic direction we went for, with game, character and artistic inspirations.
We took the HEART theme as more of the heart of someone's soul, their entire being, in life and beyond. Inspiration was taken from blood moon aesthetics, in red-blue hues, with a much more spiritual approach.
Our game ended up with a soul guardian named Shibito, wandering around in a dark forest and helping corrupted souls by purging them and setting them free.
ENVIRONMENT
environment moodboard
early concepts
For the environment, I wanted to gather and take in as many inspirations as possible. Because when I create an environment, I build an entire world and imagine every event that could happen in it. I looked for games, movies and artworks and listened to specific music while drawing the concepts.
It didn't take a while to figure out the art style and atmosphere, because I was really inspired to begin with. Now it was more a matter of fitting this style into development.
background
rocks & misc environment
bushes and trees
bigger tree - cut in 4 tiles
river
one way tiles
I wanted the game's style to be bold, original and unusual from what you'd see of a mobile game. I wanted a painted, very natural style. It was difficult to achieve; I had to redo a lot of tiles that didn't fit in the background, and fix some perspectives issues.
The river has arrows to show the direction it will bring the player to, as it is a sort of "cart" or continuous path that leads the player from the start of the river to its end.
CHARACTER - SHIBITO
When I design characters or skins, I usually go for the silhouette first; It is how we define a character's personality and how they become recognizable.
I tried multiple features, each expressing a different kind of personality, and went for the one my group thought fit our aesthetic the most, which was the third one.
Then, I went and refined the silhouette, until I had something that satisfied me, which is the final concept to the left.
In order to include Shibito in-game and fit him to the gameplay, I drew a puppet and separated it in multiple parts; Hair strands, the veil, basic human rigging, etc...
The animations are simple, as it is a phone screen after all and something too flashy might make the game hard to look at. However, they still express simple movements and animations.
UI & MARKETING
A GIF mock-up for the animation I was going for in the main menu.
This was achieved by separating parts of the model (head, chain, hair strands...) and animating them in Unity.
This was achieved by separating parts of the model (head, chain, hair strands...) and animating them in Unity.
FINAL
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A few logo examples for the app icon. We stuck with the first one.
This is the music I composed for the gameplay part using FL Studio. I have played instruments like piano and guitar before, but never truly composed anything. It was a very nice experience to use my music theory knowledge, and actually got me interested in using the software to compose further music in the future.
Wallpapers I drew for the game's marketing campaign. The first one was designed to be printed in high quality, while the second one was more of a PC wallpaper / Google banner illustration.