Introduction
Many artistically gifted designers are eager to create the aesthetic elements of their games, but have think little on defining the aesthetic rules that their game’s look will adhere to. By defining your art direction, you can bring other designers into the fold and work more efficiently – having more artists developing game assets to create a more complete look.
This project will develop your ability to define and adhere to established aesthetics through proper art direction.
Project
In this project, you will research the graphics and popular games of historic game consoles. Your findings will be used to create a digital retro game that mimics the graphics and gameplay mechanics of your chosen console.
Through this exercise, you will:
- Research game history
- Utilize historical precedents as a basis for modern game designs
- Define a game’s art direction according to a specific style of graphics
- Create a retro digital game
- Practice game art techniques such as sprite creation, animation, environment tiling, and others
game requirements
Each student must create a playable retro video game. This consists of:
- Game can be for 1 or more players
- Base your game on a popular style of game on a historic game console
- At least one central, repeatable, core interaction mechanic based on the core mechanic of a recognizable video game
- A component or resource that the player must manage (health, a ball, a collection of items, ammo, etc.)
- Win/loss conditions
- A goal
- Meaningful decisions for players
- Game must have well developed art (animated sprites that closely mimics historic game graphics, environments created from tileable sprites, background graphics, UI graphics, etc.)
- Games may not use non-public domain intellectual property (IP) – all game themes must be original
- Sound closely mirroring the original console’s capabilities (may be downloaded from the internet)