This week was spent on getting the game prototype ready for the playtest that was scheduled for the following week. I did some warm up sketching so I could better prepare for the main piece. While Jeremy is the world designer, he was adamant on not doing any concept art, so I took the initiative to do it myself to support my teammates.

I took inspiration from real world locations, such as the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul. Kamilla originally suggested this as she had been to Istanbul. I really like its ancient stone structure, and I think it could be adapted with some purple/pink lighting to make it look dreamy and fit in with the vaporwave aesthetic.

While it’s a bit removed from the GDD, I think more defined visuals would help the game stand out from potential competitors if it were to be put on the market. This is because liminal spaces and pool rooms are a fairly saturated market, with many games such as Dreamcore, Pools, Escape the backrooms, and the list goes on. We need a game that has more substance to its visuals as opposed to being derived entirely from modern internet aesthetics.

These games tend to be walking simulators that rely on a creepy and eerie atmosphere. Dreamcore, for example boasts as one of the “largest liminal game ever made” Whenever a game’s selling point is its size and not its content, it usually strikes a red flag in me. I hope having a less derivative art style as well as our narrative / story-telling component makes our game stand out against liminal space ones, but also vaporwave inspired games.

I also included the axonometric techniques I learned about in An Architectural Approach to Games. You can see how I utilised a plan drawing of the overall level, then combined a section and elevation drawing to show how I imagined the initial parkouring section to look like.

The level starts out with a small parkour section. I recently watched a video that stressed the importance of in-game documentation. While our game is fairly small, a beginning area to quickly test out the abilities and player movement would be handy for future play testing. The second chamber opens up into the main chamber which is a large cavernous room with a domed ceiling, partially flooded and tangled with vines and many pillars for the player to traverse. As they enter this area, the player can see a vhs tape, glowing pink like the lighting, split up and they have to collect the four pieces. In order to collect these pieces, they must utilise the puzzle solving mechanics. As there is a piece in a hidden room in the second chamber traversible only by the walls. Then there are two pieces of the tape in the main chamber accessible only on the ceiling. When all four pieces are collected then the player can retrieve the VHS tape and the exit in the pool opens up to end the game.  This concept art isn’t completely faithful to the original GDD. However, I wanted to develop on the pool room style using real-world inspirations as it would set aside Daydream from the many other games using liminal, pool room and/or vaporwave style to a potential investor. 

I drew this illustration on my Samsung tablet in Infinite Painter and sent it to my teammates over Slack so it could be incorporated into the level design. I think I should have made it more legible, the definition of the design gets lost in my many annotations. However, the process of game design is very iterative so I imagine this concept art will be revised through the engine implementation.

I also did my first tutorial in Unreal Engine where I used the blueprints system for the first time. I created a first person movement mechanic. The blueprints system is very intuitive to use but Unreal engine is so bulky it’s very confusing to navigate. Hopefully I’ll be continuing my endeavours within the engine due to my role as the technical artist.