To help me decide my game’s portrayal, I have made two mood boards with contrasting aesthetics, as I had two approaches for my game. One goes for a more classical circus vibe, whereas the other mood board depicts a colourful and childlike portrayal.
However, only one of the mood boards depicted can represent the lead art style and aesthetic. In the end, I found myself going for the second mood board with the brighter colours. I also had a talk with one of my friends from back home about these ideas:
After talking with her, it gave me some incredible insight about what I wanted to do. Although making the overall theme “cute-like” could fall into a cliché, which isn’t a bad thing, however, I believe to an extent that this genre of game is oversaturated. A very well loved game amongst fans, Doki Doki Literature Club! (2017), has somewhat increased the production for this sort of genre (because of the absolute jaw dropping mechanics; DDLC was one of the first games to read into the player’s account and sort of call out the player’s actions, breaking the 4th wall), although not being the first game to have made the “Oh wow this game looks wholesome! But it’s actually not!” category. As a result of this, it’s going to be harder to come up with ground breaking plot twists and a narrative.
To summarise, I still want to look into my game’s art direction and look at other forms of media to assist me with my overall game aesthetics.