Timeline
8 months
2024
Sylvie s Constellation
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Team
Design Team
UI/UX Team
Art Team
Role
Creative Lead
Tools
Figma
Unity
Adobe Illustrator
Overview
A 2D puzzle adventure game following the developing journey of a newborn star. Set against the canvas of celestial space, the star is on a quest of self-discovery and exploration. Drawing inspiration from real constellations, Sylvie's Constellation retells constellation folklore and stories with a bit of a twist.
The game contains only hand-drawn assets, drawn by dedicated and talented artists. A focal point of Sylvie's is the animated artwork. Artists painted detailed images and handed them off to animators from a collaboration with the animation club of Georgia Tech.
Process
For the game loop and general gameplay, a Game Design Document was created with a few sketches to map out the aesthetic and creative direction of the game.
Characters
I was given the concept for the main character, Sylvie, and created the final look. After Sylvie, I laid the groundwork for new characters that would give team members freedom to add their flair to a character. Characters were faceless and relied on body language to convey emotions, which made it much easier to keep all the characters cohesive. I gave tutorials on the art style we envisioned and gathered inspiration and moodboards.
This game idea was pitched to VGDev, Georgia Tech's game development club, as an opportunity for developers and artists alike. We underestimated the number of members who took interest in this game idea and ran into our first problem. Our first programming meeting had over 20 members, and our first art meeting rivaled that number. There weren't enough tasks to distribute to all the members, and we didn't want to hand out busy work that felt unfulfilling. The tasks we did come up with required more implementation and stretched what was plausible within our given time frame.
Reflection
To provide tasks for the vast number of programmers, Sylvie's framework became modular. After providing a base framework, developers did not need to wait for the completion of prerequisite systems to start their tasks. To ensure members would always have the option to work on something new, storylines and character creation were left open-ended for designers to create game puzzles and character stories. To keep up with the content that our artists produced, I initiated a collaboration with Georgia Tech's animation club to produce our animated images.
I finished the development of Sylvie with a bit of regret, as I had a lot more meaningful stories I wanted to tell through all the characters. Ironically, Sylvie's story ends similarly to how I feel about this project. Sylvie aimed to become a very big and special constellation, but still felt unfulfilled since they believed they were still so small and had no tragic or dramatic story. However, it is revealed that Sylvie had already become a constellation. Zooming out, you see constellation lines connecting the pathways Sylvie traveled. Their whole adventure was their story, and it was really the journey that mattered rather than the end.
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So I keep telling myself, although I'm not entirely happy with how Sylvie's Constellation turned out, it shouldn't affect me as much because I gained so much out of this experience. I learned, I struggled, I met so many talented people, and I had the wonderful opportunity to lead this game in the first place. I am extraordinarily proud of all the artwork we were able to create and my team of artists who worked with me and met my deadlines. I am eternally grateful to everyone who worked on Sylvie's Constellation and I am thankful they joined me on this short-lived yet meaningful journey.
P. S. Sylvie's Constellation also got to showcase at Dreamhack!!
