Other details

🎨  Visual Development

After the team settled on game idea, we decided it should give the player a feeling of whimsy and wonder. We also had the general setting of floating islands and flying ships in mind. With that, I gathered references on airships and buildings, formed a mood board, and created a piece of concept to act as a look and feel reference. From there, some quick tests were done on the visual style and animation.

References

Mood board

Concept art

Style & animation tests

🚢  Airships

The main aspect of the game is its airships. Originally, this was going to be the only form of the player. Later we created a human character for walking on islands. However, since the airships are used for combat and traveling between islands, they remained the most important set of assets.

We ended up with three types of player ships (beginner, fast, and heavy), as well as their enemy variations, two additional types of enemy ships, and the boss. It was important that there was a clear visual distinction between the player and enemy (or bandit) ships. In general, the thought process for the bandit's style was ships that were unmaintained, trashed, and crudely fitted with extra elements.

Mockups

Development

🔫  Weapons

There are five various weapons in the game that can be used on both player and enemy ships. Each weapon has a very different action, so we attempted to have a clear distinction between them all. The goal was so the player can quickly recognise what weapon they currently have in their loadout, and what any given enemy ship has as well.

Mockups

Development

🏝️  Islands

In the game, there's a total of nine islands; one for the tutorial, three for shops, and five for treasure. While each island is visually unique, they reuse elements (often with a slight change) in order to save development time.

The goal of the building style of the tutorial and shop islands was to look scrappy, using parts of old ships and scrap metal. For the treasure islands, the idea was to have old structures from long before the events of the game. There was a plan to create a full interior for each building, however, due to time constraints, this was reduced to a single room for only the shops.

Mockups

Development

🦸 Characters

Once we decided to include the ability to walk on islands, dig for treasure, and enter the shop buildings themselves, we developed a human player character, three shopkeepers, a bandit boss, and a corgi. The main aim of the character design was the reflect their role in the game.

Mockups

Development

🖥️  User interface

This was my first experience creating user interface for a game, and I learnt quite a bit through playtest feedback and GDC talks. A goal of the UI was to make it feel apart of the world rather than an overlay. While the shop/loadout menu could be improved in its clarity. I'm glad with how the UI turned out overall, especially the 'action indicators' which prompt the player on actions such as docking their ship or digging for treasure.

Mockups

Development

📣  Marketing

Towards the end of development, we created some marketing materials to feature on social media, host websites (such as itch.io), as well as for various showcases in Brisbane and Melbourne, Australia.

Materials

Showcases & Conferences