Palace of a Thousand Curses
I like to share the current state of our game: Palace of a Thousand Curses. All pictures were taken directly in game inside Unity 2022.3 URP.
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TL;DR: All in-game 3D graphics are entirely done by me in this game. From conceptualization to execution. All concepting was done in 3D as an immediate part of the process. No concept art was provided other than references, and the requirement to stay true to Andalusian cultural sights and general architecture.
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Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3330540/Palace_of_a_Thousand_Curses/?l=english
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Longer version:
As the sole 3D artist on this project in a small team, I developed the art style by being responsible for tech art, art conception/stylization, and execution. I created the full screen shader graphs for hatching, watercolor, and paper layering and developed a method to "sculpt towards outlines". The goal was to depict an old fairy tale 2D illustration look in 3D, such as the one seen in Arthur Rackham's work or old Arabic fairy tale paintings. I did the post processing/color grading, created the assets/props, player char and enemies, environment/level art, cloth physics on the hero, as well as established a dynamic camera system, similar to the one seen in the Trine series.
Furthermore, I created additional animations directly in Unity. Also wrote a versatile rotation follow script, which enabled us to have several dynamic elements, like statue heads or eyes, following the player in a randomized manner in terms of angles and timing.
For the real world, the first part before the book world that plays in a library of a merchant's house and a cold, rainy night in the streets of medieval Granada, we used a lot of stock assets, which I also adapted and enhanced. I did all the lighting and set dressing there as well.
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Did a small breakdown here:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OvBxok
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What I didn't do: UI, some of the VFX (ghost shader, dust puffs, and combat FX), none of the gameplay-related, externally authored animations, rigging, character retopo, game programming, sound FX, music, and game design (even tho with the latter 3, there was some collaboration and exchange that led to some features in the game).
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The animations, character retopo, and rigging were done by Otto Weston, who is a badass puppeteer and artist:
https://www.artstation.com/simplicious
The whole game was written, designed, directed, and coded entirely by veteran Uber Machine Shawn Frison (Spec Ops: The Line).
Both are two of the most awesome people I ever had the pleasure to work with, and it was a blast of a time.
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Lastly, I created some temp music tracks for the project in my spare time, of which two are still heard in the demo:
https://hardev.bandcamp.com/album/palace-of-a-thousand-curses
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80lv posts:
https://80.lv/articles/an-indie-2-5d-action-platformer-inspired-by-old-school-prince-of-persia-games
indie games devel: