Processing the “room”

What’s the “room”?

As the concept artist/2D artist for Room for Growth, I was assigned with concepting, creating and choosing the art as high quality as I can to my ability for the game. Although most of the team are able to do art alongside and assisting the progression. The point with the game is to make you feel that Frustration in life but still giving you the “choice”, mostly focused on growing a plant. But first let's take a look into how Room for Growth actually began.

First of all it used to be “Frustration”. Before we were trying to mindstorm deeper on what mechanics or what gameplay will make the player/user feel that Frustration deep within. Around Feb 20th we then decided for a vote with renaming “Frustration”, in a democratic vote from almost 80 names. A quick selection or elimination took place between all of our team members by simply counting which name with the most votes will be selected for the next qualification. It in the end had come down between these names the image displayed:

The voting gave our game or project its definition of a name. Something that fits the game better than just, “Frustration”.

“Room’s” style

At the beginning of what we decided to make: a plant growth game under the Unity platform and 2D in artstyle. Plant growth, as decided, was chosen to create a “contrast” to what seems to be a casual and soothing game, against an oppressive system that forces you to do more as you continue and face more falls that you caused during poor decision making.

Sure the easy part was the ideas and brainstorms of how to make this game a more soothing but yet oppressive experience. But the hard part was how to make it stressful and casual at the same time. The artstyle was first in discussion, in short we all can do pixel art and hence we agreed and chose high fidelity pixel art for our main game style.

The initial steps of concept arting are thanks to Miranda Lenaghan , she came up with a presentation of mood board and everyone has agreed to a pastel color pixel art. Multiple “playtests” were displayed to inter-teams within echoes and below displays what is most preferred in artstyle.

Of course it will not be set in a fantasy environment, instead it will be an urban city similar to what is displayed on the top left of the image above.

Production room:

The easiest decision I have made for production of the art was to create the art using the tool Aseprite. Reliable software for pixel art. At the first phase which was concept arting, according to the mood board that teammate Miranda had proposed, I have searched up art/color script online from either Google or Pinterest links, specifically through a process of non-AI art, really seeing more of those recently.

The initial art that was proposed by me was the close to end game appearance, a grey and depressing apartment room with the main focus of the game, at the center with the environment setting in an urban city:

Admittedly, I have gone through some inspiration from the mobile game “Vector” ‘s black and white styling, along with the room design of the idea: “If it was me, would I live in this apartment?” in mind. The process of this art was simple, the top and bottom black bars signifying the roof and the floor, they are also tweaked in a way to be just right spatially to make the audience feel that this is oppressive but not too much. I have purposely done the background skyscrapers to have color and left the room to be fully black and white, because in theory black and white is a pretty frustrating color to witness or to deal with. During playtests, this scene received some positive feedback.

What now?

The entire team has decided that the game loop was originally 10 days but, now changed to 7 days for balancing and easier production therefore on those 7 days the color must be switched in a smooth manner, red to orange then yellow and then blue then grey. According to the color script I have proposed. Miranda has given the idea of changing the hue of the art, this is good advice. For the art side I was also tasked to try implementing color into the game scene that will start from an easier or more calmer approach, and alongside with production or experimentation of the color script order between the 7 days.