NYP x KAMK: GRAB-L3R
During the months of June 2023 - August 2023, I was part of an exchange student group from Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) which flew to Finland for an overseas internship programme with the Kajaani University of Applied Sciences (KAMK).
There, we collaborated with Finnish students from KAMK to form Team Clank, a small group of 10 students (inclusive of myself), with the goal of creating a published game by the end of the 3 month Game Dev Summer programme. Thus, GRAB-L3R was born - a 2D platformer with charming pixel-art graphics, where you navigating levels as the little robot Grabby; not by running and jumping, but by using a grappling hook to propel yourself across platforms.
The team consisted of a Producer, Designer, an Art Team, a Programming Team, and a Sound Engineer. During this project, I primarily took the role of an Art Lead, though I contributed to other aspects of asset creation and game design as well.
Programs used by me:
- Clip Studio Paint (concept art, game asset creation)
- Photoshop (game asset creation, graphic design)
- Piskel (game asset creation)
- Unity Engine (level design, asset integration)
Click the link below to try the game for yourself from itch.io, or scroll further to learn more about the work I did for the project!
The Concept - Game Design
With the project needing to be completed within the span of 3 months (10 weeks), maintaining a feasible scope was the largest priority and factor when considering the kind of game we wanted to create.
We decided early on that a 2D game would be the most managable for the time and team we had, and settled on the platformer genre as being one that can provide a polished gameplay experience while working with simple mechanics. This, however, posed the question: 'What would make the game stand out in the market?'. Due to the influx of other games with the same premise, ours may likely also turn out to be 'just another' entry in the scene. Cases like Celeste, on the other hand, made a name for itself with smooth, precise movement and challenging levels, creating interest in the community as a test of skills (especially popular among speedrunners). This made the game stand out despite being a pretty standard platformer, and we wanted ours to be unique in some way as well.
A bit of brainstorming with the team ultimately gave me an idea: subverting the expectations of a platformer by changing the primary movement mechanics of the player. Even Celeste, to return to it as an example, made use of running, dashes, and jumps for its movement mechanics - things you would find in most platformers. My proposal was to take away these mechanics, and create a platformer where the player had to make use of a different mechanic in order to 'platform', so to speak. This unique twist on the genre will give our game the selling point it needs to stand out.
The idea was well received by the team, and another valuable contribution was added by one of the programmers: since the player can no longer run or jump, we could use a different way of navigating levels; say, a grappling hook that could not only pull and launch players with momentum, but can be used to interact with the level itself via hooking onto objects, pulling enemies around, etc.
Thus GRAB-L3R continued to evolve in this direction. Puzzle-solving elements were added to the level with additions of pressure plates, and doors, and enemies were designed not to hurt the player, but obstruct navigation, creating more engaging level designs as a result.
Moodboard and Research
As a starting point, we began to compile moodboards and research for things that could inspire the characters and setting for the game. With the concept of a player with no movement and only a grappling hook to use, we felt it would be fitting to have the main character be a robot of some sort. This lead into ideas of an overgrown, post-apocalyptic world of sorts where only robots remain, thus applying the robot theme to the enemies as well.
Development: Grabby
For character development, I followed my usual workflow of starting with silhouette ideas. The goal was to create a simple yet eyecatching main character that will appeal to the player - more importantly, the 'grappling hook' had to stand out in a way that visually reads well so as to aid gameplay.
Feedback from the team and coaches for the programme led to a rather unanimous vote on the 'crab-like' silhouette (affectionately named Crabby), which I proceeded to develop with detail and colors.
Color testing went through two phases; I first used colors from generated color palettes as a starting point, before the Producer gave feedback on more 'realistic' machinery colors. With that I did another round of color testing, keeping the feedback in mind and going back to the research for references. Finally we ended up with a desgin that was approved and ready for game asset creation.
Development:
Drawovers (Style Guide)
Before jumping straight into asset creation based off the concept art done by myself and the other artists, I first did 'draw-overs' which served as a style guide. This is hand-drawn over screenshots of the level layout (blocked by another teammate with draw.io) and serves to include as many elements of the game itself while testing for visual read and cohesion.
Elements drawn in the draw-over will later be used to create the tileset by making minor edits to create individual (connecting) tiles, as well as for individual interactable assets. Decorative elements are also included, and the background is a quickly-made placeholder which will be reedited later for the final game.
Production: Game Asset Creation
Early on when doing the drawovers, I had already planned to reuse certain elements such as by recoloring some tiles from the first level to use in the second. This was done in consideration of what time we had for production, and being able to reuse work in a different way saved a lot of time and effort that could be spent on other things.
Tilesets were done in Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint, with variations of tiles with and without additional decor. Everything is aligned to the pixel and gives options to connect them differently with one another in-engine itself.
Interactable sprites which required animation were done in Piskel; sprites such as the door, pressure plates, and spikes (placed over the tilemap) had to be created in a way that they could be extendable to fit the length or height of space in game. This was done with Unity's 9-slice modifier, which I tested and documented specifications for cutting borders.
I mostly worked on all things environment and level related; only one sprite for each character (including the player) was made by me during style testing, and character animations were later created by another artist using the static sprite.
Extendable Sprite testing in-engine, and lightning animation testing
Production: Level Testing and Iteration
For the most part, the initial level designs had been done by my teammate using draw.io. I primarily served as a second pair of eyes to provide feedback during the blocking stage.
As the production continued, however, my role expanded to further test the level and make necessary tweaks in-engine. This took place roughly the same time as the game asset integration (which I also had to do), and consisted of many many rounds of testing by myself as well as reviewing feedback from playtesters and other team members.
This was inarguably the most tedious part of production; a side-effect of greyboxing the level during the game's prototype phase was that the mechanics we had access to at the time were extremely rough versions of the grappling hook. As the grappling hook was polished, certain parts of the greybox design simply didn't work anymore and either had to be edited or overhauled completely. When Asset Creation was done, I dedicated the rest of my time in the project entirely towards tweaking and testing the level in the game engine.
I worked closely with the programmers during this stage, communicating with the people in charge of different areas (player mechanics, level interactables, etc.) to make sure things were implemented the right way.
Some level design work I did, and notes for both myself while level testing as well as for the programmer for instructions on mechanics that need to be fixed or added.
(Post) Production: Publishing Material, UI art
Though I was not the one in charge of designing the UI wireframes, I had been requested to create some elements for the UI art of the game. This included simple boxes for menu pop-ups, and creating 'screens' - which I did by reusing assets from tilesets and drawovers once again.
Publishing material included game cover art, banners (such as the one at the very top of this page!), and backgrounds for the game's publishing; with some creative tweaking and assembling of game assets, this was not an entirely difficult task to do as we approached the end of production.
I also created the game logo and team logo for use on the game page and presentations.
Final Game and Publishing
click image for itch.io game page
Our final game trailer, presented after publishing onto itch.io.
In the end, this is probably my lorgest project to date, with a much more fleshed out team than any of my other projects in NYP. For 10 weeks of work, it's a strange feeling to see the final product knowing that I had a hand in creating it from the ground up, from contributing the main 'gimmick', to contributing to the main assets for the game itself that can be seen on screen.
Though Team Clank only existed for the course of this programme, it was a pleasure working with the Finnish students from KAMK, and I learnt a lot working under a Producer with project management tools, while taking on the role of the Art Lead myself with responsibilities and communications outside of simply 'creating art'.