These are photos of plants I take on a daily basis; they serve as the foundation for my concepts. I selected a few of them and enhanced them artistically. Furthermore, based on where they were photographed, they can be clearly categorized into aquatic plants and terrestrial plants, making the game content more realistic.

These are the real-life models for some of the assets I’ve added.

Screenshot from GDD

The GDD indicates that the author prefers a hand-drawn style for the project and specifies that the overall style should be inspired by Impressionist painting. Therefore, based on the reference images in the GDD, I created the necessary scenes and also searched Pinterest for similar images to serve as references for the overall style.

I’m not familiar with many 2D or 2.5D games that feature plant-based environments. For this project, given our team’s overall capabilities and to stay as true as possible to the sketches in the GDD, my teammates and I agreed to create the maps using a visual style similar to Don’t Starve. In terms of art style, I also drew inspiration from Cereza and the Lost Demon, as suggested by my instructor. Other games I referenced include Gogh, Hollow Knight, and Oscuro Blossom’s Glow.

Personal Practice

I’ve experimented with many different styles, including digital art and physical art, with the goal of maintaining a stylized background while keeping it consistent with the characters, yet ensuring the game visuals remain clear and the background stands out from the characters. Most of these were spontaneous experiments I undertook because, after several rounds of playtest feedback and discussions with the team, we hadn’t arrived at a solution we were fully satisfied with. Unfortunately, I ultimately didn’t find any results from these experiments that were better than the current approach, but they did help us rule out certain options—such as using scanned photos of real objects to replace the rocks or other plants in the background.