This game and all the art assets used were created for my first year Media Production for Games module to showcase use of a game engine in the creation of a game and the use of a consistent design and artistic theme for the game. Aside from a few smaller prototypes and game jams this was one of my first major projects developed using Unity, which was one of my motivations when I decided to make a 2D platformer. Although the 2D platformer is less complicated to develop than other genres I decided to add my own unique mechanics to separate it from other similar games.
I settled upon a simple art style for the game with monochrome background and environment object while interactive objects such as the neon objects the player can pick up are bright and made to stand out as much as possible. My reasons for this art style were twofold: Having a
relatively simple but still striking art style meant I could more easily develop assets and a good overall theme without having tremendous
artistic skills, this art style is also useful from the player’s perspective as it makes it immediately obvious which objects in the scene are interactive and necessary for the completion of the levels.
The unique mechanic of the game, absorbing the neon objects from the scene to fuel movement altering powers was the part of the initial concept for the game and the idea for the monochrome/neon aesthetic came from me choosing to highlight this mechanic to the player using visual cues. This project was also important in reminding me to create sufficient backups as I lost the memory stick holding all the .xcf files for the textures some time after the project was submitted, making it difficult to continue development of the game beyond the original levels as I had intended to do.