We created our first tech demo this week and got a pogostick bouncing around in the engine. We also created a rough draft for a game idea along with concept art for different levels, decided on a comic-book inspired visual style, and made a draft version of the character sketch.
Tech Demo in Unreal Engine 5
Game Design Ideation
The concept for the game we decided on was to follow the story of a character who is living in a society that is divided into different classes in a huge vertical world. The people of the bottom world, where the character lives, are not allowed to go up and are prevented from doing so with the use of laser-shooting robots. The bottom world is a congested cyberpunk-styled factory city.
The character, who found a pogostick, starts pogoing up the factory city, dodges the attacks from the laser-shooting robots, and reaches the second level of the world to a city that is a little spaced apart (although very grungy) and has natural light sources.
The character receives some power-ups and continues their journey up, again resisted by the robots, and finally reaches up to a city with an open sky, separated spaces, and more trees and nature in the world, almost resembling urban cities.
Here are some FigJam board screenshots for the idea:
Character Concept Art
Here is the character concept art for the game:
The design principle for the character was to 1) capture the punkrock, streetstyle vibe of a rebellious teenager and 2) remain gender and race neutral. We wanted the character to embody the spirit of extreme pogo sport but also be inclusive to all audience.
Things for next week:
- Prepare the materials for 1/4s presentation.
- Create and combine the shader demo to show a comic-book artstyle.
- Have a basic demo level created to showcase everything in the same video.