Thirsty
Category: Game Development |
Date: July 2024 |
Platform: PC
Overview
A vampire stealth game - You're a vampire, and you'll do anything to satiate your thirst... even at the cost (or reward?) of Springfield's destruction.
Created in a team of 7 in 1 week for SJSU Summer Game Jam
My roles on this project: Art Director, Producer, Technical Artist
daorange.itch.io/thirsty
Awards
SJSU Game Dev Club Jam Summer 2024: Best on Theme, Best Art Direction
Art Direction
The theme for the game jam was "Save Yourself, Not the World" - and so, we created a game where you, as Seb the Vampire, were out to save yourself from thirst... at the cost of an entire town's wellbeing. The goal: to make 5 versions of the same town, slowly deteriorating as people died and/or turned into vampires. To make the models easy to produce in the length of just one week, we settled on low-poly style models. We decided we wanted to go with a cartoony object scale as a change from our last game, which used more realistic scale, so that we could try out doing something new. This also allowed us to fit a "larger" town in a smaller play area so that we could create more storytelling with less surface area. The game takes place over a length of about 5 weeks, with each level having about a week in between (hinted at through the state of the town and newspapers)
Lighting
The lighting was designed to emphasize the difference between each different variation of the town as it fell into ruin. Starting out with a peaceful blue and bright flowers that emphasize the serenity of the town of Springvale, the lighting slowly shifts towards a blood red with even heavier fog hanging over the tragedy of what was once a town.
Before lighting effects / After lighting effects
The lighting is a combination of Unreal's skylight and exponential height fog. The fog cloaks the town in a sense of mystery, while the lighting sets the mood for the scene. I wanted the town's degradation to be conspicuous to the player causing the destruction, the player's actions having a real effect on the world around them. A story of a town facing off against a terrible monster, falling into chaos, panic, ruin... And I took that into consideration with every single aspect of the level and environment design, not just the lighting.
Level/Environment Design
We only had a week to make this game, so the initial layout of the town was just a quick sketch. I wanted to have all of the necessities of a small town, but also had to limit my imagination in order to make sure our modelers didn't have too much on their plate, so I decided on 5 key areas: a gas station, market, school, playground, and church (with a graveyard). I wanted to lay it out in a way that felt believable as a town and be interesting to walk around, so I spread these key locations out around the map while clumping together ones that made sense, interspersing them with residential areas. The locations I chose were locations I felt I could use to push the storytelling of the scene...
Below are the 5 different levels (with the fog removed for clarity). If you look closely, you'll notice little details changing in each one. I'll point them out in a minute.
Areas of Shutdown: In each level, I shut off more areas of the town. This was to tell the town's story while also blocking off areas for the player to access, limiting their choices progressively. The areas close off in this order:
[1] The school and playground (protect the children first from danger!) [2] The marketplace and park (workplaces close down to stay home for lockdown) [3] The gas station (closed down from damage/lack of people driving cars to come fill up)
Crowds: People gather in different locations depending on how far into the game it's been.
• In levels 1 and 2, people are fairly spread out and going about their normal business. Even with the schools shut down, people don't fully believe that "vampires" could be attacking them.
• In level 3, people gather near the newly blocked off marketplace to protest its shutdown. These people belong to the "Vampires Aren't Real" group that thinks the town's reaction to the threat is stupid and irrational. In the meantime, the other half of the town has flooded to the church for sanctuary (shown by the piled up cars near the church).
• In level 4, the "Vampires Aren't Real" group has pretty much been eliminated, as they were easy pickings for vampires by standing out around at night... The entirety of people in town are either hidden in their homes or evacuated to the church (as shown on newspapers). The makeshift car tow area is full of the town's dead's cars, and you can see the tow truck around sometimes.
• In level 5, pretty much everyone is dead... The only people left are the Vampire Hunters group (which have been the threat the player faces throughout every level), who are left to guard the ruined town and hopefully eliminate the vampire. The player can drink from these enemies, but risk death if seen.
The graveyard can be seen filling up with graves in between each level, to the point where the graveyard fills up past capacity and starts leaking into the surrounding areas. The flowers and plants also become grayer every level to emphasize the destruction.
I also added a light flickering effect using Unreal's Light Function material, highlighting the state of disrepair the town is in without anyone left to take care of the lights.
Newspapers and graffiti build up as the story continues. The player can find littered newspapers and missing persons posters, as well as graffiti from both people in denial and people terrified out of their minds. The houses and buildings also slowly get boarded up, showing the houses and buildings that are either out of use or being taken refuge in.
Models
I created the models for the main character, the vampire hunters, the civilians (just the same basic model but plain and blue to keep them faceless and unidentifiable, as the vampire wouldn't care who he was attacking) and the bat. I created the animation for the vampire, and both the rig and animation for the bat (which was used as a death animation to show the infected turning into vampires).
Congrats, the entire town is dead and destroyed now! You satisfied Seb?
Game Credits
Programming: Hoang Nguyen, Endlessette Osborn, Steven Vu
3D Modelling: Endlessette Osborn, Phuong Truong, Nathaniel Zapata
Illustration: Adora Vu
Sound Design: Bryan Nguyen
daorange.itch.io/thirsty