Visual Style Overview
- Theme: Dark with a surreal, dream-like quality. The game world feels alive and mysterious.
- Mood: Tense and atmospheric, with moments of vibrant energy during combat.
- Colour Palette: Deep, rich colors like purples, blues, and reds, with glowing highlights
- Art Style: Stylised 2D, with bold outlines and hand-drawn sketchy quality and textures. Visuals inspired by Hades, Curse of The Dead Gods and Darkest Dungeon.
Note: Pixel art styles are also very effective and have been especially used in the roguelite genre, experimentation with pixel art is encouraged but not necessary.
Key References
- Environment: Abandoned ruins, and otherworldly caverns. Can be minimalist but highly atmospheric. Inspirations: Children of Morta, Below and Cult of The Lamb.
- Characters: Simplified silhouettes with exaggerated features for easy recognition. Inspirations: Hades
- Effects: Dynamic visual effects, such as glowing particle trails, flickering lights, and smoky auras.
Character Design Concepts and Guidelines
*These designs are not concrete and changes are welcomed as long as the general idea is kept.
Protagonist
Left reeling after the sudden loss of their mother in a tragic accident. Struggling to pick up the pieces of their life, they retreat into isolation, weighed down by a sense of failure and self-recrimination, abandoning all life and personal connections. One night, they find themselves pulled into a lone new body in a surreal, other world known as Limbo, a manifestation of their own grief.
Trapped in a world shaped by their emotions, their grief threatens to consume them. Despite their sorrow, they possess a quiet strength and a lingering spark of hope, ignited by the Tree of Sorrow. They must confront the manifestations of their loss and rediscover hope, or risk forever becoming a hollow husk—a warning to others of the cost of unhealed sorrow.
- Silhouette: A caped warrior
- Details: Body made entirely of wood, cape draped down the back from the neck and half tabard on either side of belt, long reaching branches protrude from the head
- Colours: brown, green
Tree of Sorrow/Acceptance
The Tree of Sorrow is in need of help, bare and weak. The tree is trapped in a world of conflict and mourning, to be freed of its ails the tree requires the corrupt Griefs to be confronted, only then may peace be returned and the tree be restored to its ultimate state. Within the sorrow, Acceptance lies dormant. Once hope prevails over despair, she will free the world allowing there to be life after grief.
An NPC that acts as the players guiding light and provides upgrades.
- Silhouette: A willow tree
- Details: Body is the trunk of a tree, entire being has an ethereal glow
- Colours: White
Enemies
Grieflings: Generic creatures found in all realms and levels.
Wrought
Concept:
The Wrought represents the heavy burden of unresolved emotions. Its design emphasises weight and sluggishness, making it a tank-like enemy that physically blocks progress.
Artistic Design:
- Shape: A bulky, humanoid silhouette with exaggerated, uneven limbs and a hunchbacked posture.
- Texture: A cracked, stone-like surface with faint glowing fissures.
- Colour: Muted greys and blacks with hints of glowing green or red accents to match its thematic connection to grief.
- Motion: Moves slowly with heavy, stomping steps. When attacking, it raises its arms dramatically before slamming them down.
Whispers
Concept:
The Whisper symbolises fleeting, invasive thoughts that distract and disrupt focus. Its design is agile contrasting with the slow, heavy Wrought.
Artistic Design:
- Shape: A small, floating, wisp-like entity with trailing, smoky appendages.
- Texture: Smooth and glowing, almost like a faintly transparent sphere surrounded by tendrils of mist or smoke.
- Colour: Pale blues or whites, with a subtle aura or shimmer around it to enhance its ghostly quality. Red eye.
- Motion: Erratic and fast. When preparing to fire a projectile, it pauses briefly and gathers energy into a small orb of light through is eye.
Bosses – The Griefs
Denial
Denial is sly and manipulative, chained to its own false reality. Denial persuades and pleads beings to look away from the truth and take shelter in their comfort of lies. Denial has hypnotic attributes allowing themselves to present their voice in any form to convince others, often through the various snake heads that take turn in speaking. They are constantly changing to present a new excuse or reason to avoid accepting the reality of loss.
Denial uses chains that are shackled to both wrists as weapons by swinging them.
- Silhouette: A large serpent body with multiple heads that drags chains
- Details: Scales all over the body and no clothing, the human torso blends seemlessly into the snake half
- Colours: Brown, yellow, Green, Grey
Anger
Anger is pure wrath. It is seething at the world and is frustration incarnate. Anger possess absolute power over the fire element and nothing gets in its way. Armoured in thick volcanic hide and layered ash, all actions and words are deliberate – shooting to kill. Anger is a beast to be reckoned with. The world is a cruel and unjust place, Anger knows this all too well, therefore believes peace should never be an option. No one could convince it otherwise.
Anger uses elemental fire powers conjured from its rage.
- Silhouette: Sharp and tall, blazing windblown fire
- Details: Body and dress made from volcanic rock and ash, uses a rams face and horns to mask the fire beneath
- Colours: red, yellow, orange, black, grey
Depression
Depression is deprived and weighed down by the constant sinking feeling within it, its tone is deathly and sombre. The gaping hole in its stomach is its loss of fulfillment, the inability to digest or hold onto any positivity or hope. Whilst seemingly meek, once provoked and its self-isolation disturbed Depression is quick to lash out – transforming into an irritable and impulsive beast that appears to be created out of pure darkness or shadow matter. No matter where it is, its eerie looming presence follows it.
Depression does not have a weapon, it uses pure and raw emotion to fight using its fists.
- Silhouette: A tall, malnourished figure with a long tattered hood. A large and strong mass of matter.
- Details: The skin has an otherworldly smoothness, free of pores or imperfections that a human body might have. Despite the sinews, it lacks the roughness of scales or fur, makes it distinctively sleek.
- Colours: steel and navy blues, black, bone white, grey
Bargaining
Bargaining is heavy and cunning – a powerful ogre that hoards the lives of the living and the dead. Bargaining is, at its core, deceptive and fraudulant, always wanting more and doing anything in its power to achieve it. Bargaining is a king of their realm, adorned in gold and jewels, a master conman with a distaste for rejection, revelling in having control.
Bargaining carries a scythe propped over its shoulder.
- Silhouette: A large hooded figure with a sharp weapon that hangs over its shoulder
- Details: rough and dirtied skin but pristine and royal clothes drapped over head and belt, golden braces and chains.
- Colours: Purple, Gold, White, Red, Brown
Futher detail on the character design process can be found here.
Environment Design Guidelines
Settings:
- Realms:
- Denial: Stone walls, eerie statues, and faint green torches. Labyrinth-like.
- Anger: Volcanic, fire hazards and flowing magma, ashy, dry and barren.
- Depression: Cold, empty wasteland. Uncomfortably wet and blue.
- Bargaining: Abandoned gold mine/forge repurposed into a makeshift palace.
- Limbo: Heavenly abstract shapes in a foggy/cloudy, almost void-like but serene space. Tree of Sorrow in the middle, weapons are found here, entrances to realms found here.
- Lighting: High contrast between dark backgrounds and glowing interactive elements (resources – shards & souls).
- Textures: Hand-drawn with bold strokes. Distinct patterns for each biome (e.g. cracked stone, mossy ground).
References
Item Design Guidelines
Resources
Terra Shards
Terra Souls
Weapon Concepts
Sword
Axe
Bow
Animation Style
- Player:
- Smooth, responsive animations for movement and attacks.
- Emphasised hit effects with glowing slashes and particle bursts.
- Enemies:
- Quick, jerky movements for smaller creatures.
- Large, deliberate animations for bosses, signaling attacks.
- Environmental Elements:
- Subtle animations like flickering lights, floating particles, and swaying foliage (depending on the realm).
UI and HUD Design
- Style: Minimalistic with thematic flourishes, such as glowing borders or runic patterns.
- Font: Dream-like, fantasy-esque fonts legible at smaller sizes. Use, or use something similar, to the title font (Anger or Wrath style).
- Colours: Focus on darker blues and purples with white or lighter contrasts
- Icons: Simple but recognisable shapes, like hearts, shards, souls, swords, axes and bows.
- Colours: Health hearts in red; terra shards in green, terra souls in white.
UI reference
Basic Layout Examples of Main UI and HUD
Art Production Notes
- Resolution: All assets created at a resolution that scales well for both HD and retro displays (e.g., 1080p and high pixel art fidelity).
- (Potential) Pipeline:
- Concept sketches for characters, environments, and UI.
- Pixel art or vector-based asset creation.
- Implementation in the game engine (e.g., Unity or other chosen engine).
- Tools: Aseprite, Photoshop, Spine for animation, and game engine for integration.
Pinterest Board used for all art references and inspirations:
Leave a Reply