EmbarkA 2D platformer game made in the Godot game engine. I created all assets, designed levels, and managed some sound design.
Made with Christopher Yu in May 2019. Download the game at https://ooorz.itch.io/embark, or watch a gameplay video here. |
MY ROLE
I worked with Chris Yu throughout my high school senior project to develop Embark, a single-player platformer video game. I was in charge of visual assets, so I designed and animated everything for the game, including the player character, enemies, backgrounds, cutscenes, and various GUI elements. Later in development, I would rotate between game design, sound design, and still visual assets. All of my work was created in Adobe Photoshop. I made the cutscenes in DaVinci Resolve 15, while the game itself was made in the Godot game engine.
At first, figuring out how to animate drawings so that they looked good and felt good to play was challenging. I had also never worked with sprite sheets. Making sure that everything lined up so that a character or environment could be smoothly implemented into the game engine was something new, but I became more comfortable with it as the project progressed. My favorite part of developing Embark was polishing the animations for the player character’s abilities and painting backgrounds, while my least favorite part was making tilesets.
At the end of the first week, we had implemented all of the player character’s movements and abilities along with their assets. During the second week, I worked mostly alone since we had AP Exams; I focused on enemy animations and drafted backgrounds and tilesets. I spent the third week finalizing backgrounds, designing levels, and creating drawings for the cutscenes. Finally, I spent the last week making sound effects and putting the cutscenes together.
Overall, making a video game is a lot of work on the programming side and the art side! I have a newfound appreciation for all the games that I played, especially those with stunning visuals. I stretched my creative limits with this project, and I was more than happy to put in extra time and effort into something that I’m excited about during my senior project.
At first, figuring out how to animate drawings so that they looked good and felt good to play was challenging. I had also never worked with sprite sheets. Making sure that everything lined up so that a character or environment could be smoothly implemented into the game engine was something new, but I became more comfortable with it as the project progressed. My favorite part of developing Embark was polishing the animations for the player character’s abilities and painting backgrounds, while my least favorite part was making tilesets.
At the end of the first week, we had implemented all of the player character’s movements and abilities along with their assets. During the second week, I worked mostly alone since we had AP Exams; I focused on enemy animations and drafted backgrounds and tilesets. I spent the third week finalizing backgrounds, designing levels, and creating drawings for the cutscenes. Finally, I spent the last week making sound effects and putting the cutscenes together.
Overall, making a video game is a lot of work on the programming side and the art side! I have a newfound appreciation for all the games that I played, especially those with stunning visuals. I stretched my creative limits with this project, and I was more than happy to put in extra time and effort into something that I’m excited about during my senior project.