Stay Fast
Dec 2023 - Feb 2024
tools used:
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Unity
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Maya
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Aseprite
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Git
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Trello
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Miro
what did i do??
my role: game designer/artist
game design
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core idea
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early on, we had to establish a core gameplay loop and mechanics. due to our development time being only around 2 months, we aimed to make something quite small and concise, but also replayable, like an arcade game.
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together we decided on an initial concept of Mario Kart-like racing but stylized like Star Wars pod-racing.
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we then brainstormed some narrative/theming for the game world, deciding on a frozen planet that freezes your vehicle as you slow down.
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this is where our core loop was developed. we needed a way for players to fight back against the freezing. to fight the freezing, we decided on drifting, as this mechanic has some fun skill-expression but is also a staple in racing games. drifting would build boost and the boost would speed you up, thawing any ice buildup on your vehicle.
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I also wrote a worldbuilding doc and a script; however, most of it ended up being out of scope and never made it in. the dialogue i wrote made it in though and sets up the goal of the game!
art
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as one of the two artists on the project, i did about half of the art in the game including 2D and 3D assets.
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first, we had to settle on an art direction. we created a mood board mostly taking inspiration from blade runner, star wars, f-zero, and other sci-fi media.
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we then split assets between us. for 2D assets I created some concept art, character portraits, ui, and billboard graphics. I used procreate, clip studio paint, and aseprite to create these and it was my first real time doing pixel art!
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for 3D assets I created some miscellaneous environment assets, buildings, and a vehicle! I created these using Maya and it was my first time creating 3D assets, i found the learning curve to be steep at first but once i got the hang of it it was really rewarding!
new things i learnt!
pixel art
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before this project i had nearly no experience with pixel art and so using Aseprite to create 2D assets for the game was very fun and rewarding!
3D asset creation
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i used Maya to create many of the 3D assets found within the game such as buildings and vehicles. this was an all new experience for me and helped me learn the 3D art pipeline all the way from concept art, modelling software, and finally into engine.
in-engine development
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since this was my first ever game, i learned quite a few things about navigating around the Unity game engine, specifically with proper implementation of art assets.
takeaways/post-mortem!
after graduating from my program at Vancouver Film School, they held an award show of sorts. we were lucky enough to receive the award for best team project game for Stay Fast. this was really exciting and brought us all even closer together as a team!:D
post-mortem
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although i am proud of Stay Fast for being my first game project, i did learn quite a lot of lessons for game development going forward.
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we did not put much focus on sound, leaving it until last minute. as a result, the SFX are really unbearable to be honest, its much better playing this game on mute. this taught me to always consider a plan for all tasks, doing them incrementally throughout development and allowing for multiple passes, instead of leaving things until last minute.
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another element i learned from was playtesting. we had many developer playtests which were useful for ideating design; however, we didn't host enough non-developer playtests. this led to us not realizing how confusing navigation was for many players until it was too late to change the map. this meant we had to do last minute fixes to direct players. from this i learned the importance of playtesting throughout development, as developers can become blind to many issues.
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