Art + Design
Project: HAVEN
Game Pitch
The player controls a survivor who has crash-landed on an alien planet and lost all memory of their past. To survive, they must seek out fellow survivors that have also crash-landed, teaming up with them to defeat monsters and gather resources to carve out a safe haven on the hostile planet. Each playable survivor can unlock memories from their past in order to gain new combat abilities, and each survivor has a unique set of skills to unlock.
It is a 3D, isometric, hack-and-slash roguelike with an unlockable roster of characters, skill tree-based combat progression, and character-specific narratives to piece together; all with a side of town-building gameplay between runs.
Characters
A total of five (5) playable survivors will feature in the final game. This roster will include a bruiser, a marksman, a mage, an assassin/rogue, and an all-arounder, each of which can be build-customized as you play through the campaign.
The limited demo we're building will only feature two of them: Nim, our all-arounder (who is the character you play as in the demo), and Marz, our bruiser (who Nim will recruit at the very end of the demo). Part of our goal with these characters, in addition to fulfilling the five core combat archetypes, was to create a roster of survivors who feel like they come from vastly different worlds and walks of life. Each one comes from a different alien race on a different planet.
Early character lineup.
Early development of Nim, our all-arounder
Nailing down a final character design for Nim's turnaround sheet
Turnaround sheet for Nim
Mockup of a talksprite for Nim
Turnaround for Nim's sword
Development of Marz, our bruiser
Marz's final design
Creatures
"Planet X," the setting of Project: HAVEN, is an living wilderness stricken with corruption: specifically, a planetary sickness known as "The Blight."" Infected celestial bodies are notable for the bright-red celestial ring that appears to encircle them, which in actuality is a torus-shaped dimensional rift out of which pour parasitic creatures able to infect creatures and even learn from the world around them. Possessing a bottomless need to consume, Blighted planets are inhospitable, unforgiving, and very scarcely understood by the intergalactic societies that encounter them.
Why our five survivors have landed on such a planet is anyone's guess, but one thing is for sure: they are not alone. Here are some of the Blighted creatures they'll encounter on their travels.
From top to bottom: the "Void Bird", our demo's endgame boss; the "Hive Blimp," an entity who spawns smaller mobs called "hivelings"; and the "Blighted Protector", a heavy enemy with a long windup attack.
Blighted Protector development
Turnaround sheet for the Blighted Protector
Hiveling development
Void bird development
Exploration of the Void Bird's lair, setting of the endgame boss fight in the demo.
Setting
The titular Haven you'll build up over the course of the campaign is at the core of our game's long-term gameplay loop. While development has not yet reached the point where we're realizing structures and environmental elements, I've already created some concept art that illustrates the township's end-game potential.
The first assignment in my Illustration Principles for Illustrators & Designers (ART 373) course was to design a travel application for a place either real or fictional. I took this opportunity to explore what a post-game Haven might look like.
I landed on a future where the survivors of our game, seeking to build something greater, broadcast word of their new settlement to the rest of the galaxy, inviting adventurers of all stripes to come live on Planet X and combat the Blight.
Our next project in that same class was to illustrate a map of the location we chose for Project #1 — a perfect excuse to flesh out geography and layout.
In this distant future, Haven has had to grow exponentially in order to accommodate the population boom of incoming adventurers. Neighborhoods of homes and an apartment complex that spans a cliffside were established to house the many new residents of Haven, and plenty of public amenities have begun operation to serve the needs adventurers looking to journey outside her walls.
I imagine this map to be included in a brochure or info packet distributed to new arrivals. I had the fun idea of a sticker scavenger hunt being used to acclimate residents to their new surroundings.
Blank Map
(handed to new arrivals upon entry)
