Explore the Mysterious Forest!

The main character is just an ordinary bunny-fox hybrid. You know, the kind of animal species you see every day, right? It wants to protect its home village from the expanding mysteriousness of a nearby forest. The forest is inhabited by corrupted, uncivilized, and savage creatures that spread madness around. Somewhat against its nature, the bunny-fox bravely encounters the creatures to keep them away from the village.

The game is targeted for players who enjoy rogue-lite games and cute art style. The idea took inspiration from such games as The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon. For now, the game environment consists of a hub area (the village) and dungeons (the forest).

The Plan

In the dungeon, the player has to explore the surroundings and defeat evil creatures. By exploring the dungeon further, the player can find and collect different items or upgrades. The player must also manage their inventory wisely for its limited space. Metaprogression will happen in the hub area where the player can upgrade their skill tree. The bunny-fox is a starting character but other characters are planned for the future as well. In the beginning, the character is meant to be simple but it will gradually evolve into a more magical version as it keeps entering the forest many times. We have also planned different kinds of dungeons, but the forest will be the starting dungeon.

Issues

We didn't have a specific art director, so the whole team relied on one team lead, and we didn't have much art-oriented feedback available. For a long time, our team had too few artists working and we could not find more people to join our project until after the summer. The main issue artwise was the lack of specifying the art style. All of this led to an inconsistency in the art styles throughout the game. We should have figured out and defined the art style clearly in the beginning to avoid inconsistencies.

Solutions

With the new art team additions we were able to re-evaluate the UI art assets and specify the art style in more detail. This meant restyling all the UI assets I had been making during the summer. As I saw more of the new environmental designs and character styles, it was easier to match the new UI style accordingly. We agreed that the old UI art style was too clean and realistic considering the overall art style. I had included a lot of detail in the item and skill icons and the linework was too clean and crisp. The level of detail was too large considering that the items were eventually going to be relatively small in the game world. The new art style was specified as hand-drawn, cartoony, flat colored and outlined with only little detail. The restyling meant removing a bunch of detail from the item assets and adding noisy black outlines for the cartoony look. It was suggested that the items would also have white outlines to make them appear more like stickers and that way stand out better from the background. I was able to use the old drawings I made during the summer and just remove the many layers of detail, add the outlines, and reshape some of them.

Other UI elements like menus and inventory needed restyling as well. The UI window background was initially designed to be wooden, which we agreed made it visually noisy. Later, the backgrounds were changed to a paper-like style with flat colors as suggested. The UI windows were also outlined to achieve a more consistent and drawn look to match other art assets.

I stopped working on the project after I graduated in November 2024. Some of the UI assets are still pending restyling. The environment art is at an ongoing design stage, and I'm waiting for finalized designs to be able to update the UI styles in the best final way.

What I Learned

We had a Discord server for all the meetings and topics where team members could share their work and discuss. Previously, it's been challenging to share my work for others to see, especially work-in-process, but I know the importance of it. I learned to seek feedback and ideas for my work from other team members. I have also never worked as a UI artist in this large scale before. I learned to draw different styles better and use design and drawing tools more efficiently. I tried wireframing the UI for the first time to make initial sketches/designs and see how different UI windows would work in the game. Most importantly I learned the importance of clear communication to improve myself for future projects.