Year: 2024
Genre: Shooter, Asymmetric VR vs PC
Engine: Unity
Duration: 2024 - 2025 (Ongoing)
Team Size: 3
Platform: PC (Steam), VR
Doomed VR (Name TBD) is a local co-op fighting game where one player uses the PC to play the role of a hero, battling against gargantuan bosses controlled by the VR player. This game is mechanically inspired by titles such as Nemesis Perspective and Davigo VR, while taking an art direction reminiscent of older titles such as Quake and Doom.
I'm in charge of the art side of the project, i handle the textures, sprites and the art direction. Fairly early on we decided to make the game with 2D sprites in a 3D world to give the game more retro feeling and look.
BOSSES
I first began working on the first boss, The Lich. During the design process I went through a couple of variations before landing on the skeletal three eyed being in the finished product.
Due to required sprite changes I needed to make larger and higher quality versions of all the sprites it uses. Those sprites include minions, a giant sword, hands, body and head. Every boss has multiple sprites that are used depending on how much damage the boss has taken, and they have appropriate amounts of damage and scars. Thus, each boss part has 3-4 variant sprites. I also made particle sprites for their attacks such as the laser.
One of my favorite parts of this boss was designing the bone walls it can spawn, as it needed a lot of different bones and skulls made into a large sprite that needed to be repeatable.
The second boss I worked on is named The False Angel, the idea behind it was holy looking being slowly unveiling their facade into a darker monster.
The design thus reflects that, It begins as a white cloaked being with golden mask and wings. Their red hands are a reference to pontifical gloves. As the fight progresses their true form is slowly shown, using dark tones and reds and multiple eyes popping all over their body.
As for their effects and attacks I made the bow, in which I blended holy and dark colours so it fit with both forms of the boss. The arrow itself is constantly animated and moving to give the illusion of it being made of energy. The spikes used for their shotgun and ground slam attacks are made with similar principle, but I added roses and thorns into them for further symbolism.
The third boss, the hive is still underway as I’m still trying to make a solid design that gets across the disgust and unsightliness of a living insect nest, thus this section is very brief. In the current concepts im trying to design its head to resemble lotus seed pods to invoke the feeling of trypophobia in the players.
Then I made the generic assets for the bosses, such as the crystal sprite used for destroying the bosses shields, the towers used to spawn throwable items for each boss and parts of the main menu such as the mirror used to tell the boss what hunter the PC player has chosen.
THE HEROES/HUNTERS
As for the heroes/hunters I began working on the first one around the same time I worked on the lich, The Demolisher is a rocket launcher wielding hero, as that is the case I designed them bit unusually, making them wear a hooded robe with a church's seal on their back, the launcher itself has a wax seal to further play into them being officially contracted hunter.
I chose to hide the eyes of the human characters both to avoid having low quality eyes and make them seem less personalized. The rocket the player shoots was made by duplicating multiple rocket sprites and overlaying them in different orientations to give it a slight 3D effect. The player sprite was made to be modular, meaning the legs and the upper body are separated, and thus can be switched for animations during the gameplay easily.
Some of my favorite aspects of this character is how the shot cooldown is built into the animation itself, with the gun visibly cooling down after each shot. The hardest part of creating each character is easily the animating of their movements, as they require many sprites with minor adjustments to make the movements believable.
The second hero/hunter is The Rogue, a knife throwing fast paced character, as such the design had to reflect that. As such I gave them a dark overcoat, a bandolier of knives and grappling hook roped around their arm. The grappling hook itself is made from two overlayed sprites just like the rockets to give it a semblance of 3D.
I on purpose made them look more ragged and unprofessional compared to the demolisher, they fill the role of a sneaky and untrustworthy individual that has been hired and recruited from outside sources to deal with the problem.
The hardest part of the designing process was getting the knife throwing animation right, as it always looked a bit off, I’m in the process of trying to polish it up. I added a after effect to make the movement more believable and so that it would have a bit more oomph. This result was mainly achieved with the usage of many layers and tools like the convolution matrix in asesprite
THE AREAS
The game world itself needed many different assets in order to build a good-looking areas that thematically fit the bosses and have their own styles. We have decided to add a major centerpiece to each map, but the assets for them aren’t ready for them yet. This includes a giant organ and a heavenly gate for the two first levels.
Each area is designed around a specific boss in mind, the first area of the game, the church, is made and designed around the lich. As such I designed a lot of things churches could have such as a door, ornate chandeliers, seating, banners, stained glass windows, demonic sigils, chains, cages and paintings, which were my favorite things to design. While designing the paintings it allowed me to play around with different imagery and to test different styles of pixel art.
The second level is a dust and ash filled purgatory which is currently under construction, as such I don’t have many assets ready for it yet, I have made assortment of graves and such to be used for the level.
