Midnight Escapade
An experiment for the team, this game is a lane runner made for a non-standard control system. Rather than using a controller or mouse and keyboard, this game uses a roller ball accessible mouse controlled with the thumb and two triggers.
I primarily worked on the UI
"This game is a lane runner where the player will be trying to escape the police in Chicago whilst avoiding obstacles that would slow down the player if hit. Shadows work with a dual nature; they help the player evade and escape while simultaneously hindering the player by hiding obstacles from their vision. These shadows can only be removed by the police car following the player or the street lamps at set intervals within the level, adding difficulty. To escape the police and enter the next level, the player must use the shadows to increase their distance from the police. This distance will keep increasing until the signs of the police will no longer be seen. There are three levels in total, each getting harder and changing the setting. Levels will vary from running away from police down a road to running away on a dock in the final level." - Isabel Elia, the producer
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01
The Aesthetic
The principle idea of the game was to be noir mobsters running from the police, but going for a purely monochromatic game (excluding the yellow from the street lights) might have fatigued players. So I recommended that, between levels and the pause menu should potentially use colour to differentiate the active gameplay and the interface.
Given the theme of the game was 'cops and robbers, but make it noir', I decided to lean into the 'noir' aspect. That is to say, noir is a film genre, so we should lean into the idea of film as a medium, cinemas and art deco.
02
Pause Menu
We ended up going with the pause menu being a closing curtain intermission, with film reel as the button container. The first thing agreed upon was that the curtains had to be red. The first tested colour for the film real was an indigo but that was decided to be too high value. When everything was put through a value test, the reel got lost in the background, even if the buttons were blindingly saturated and low value.
In the second attempt, the colour used was a brown with middling saturation for the images and pale yellow for the binding of the reel itself.
We were able to keep the torn edges of the reel which I was inexplicably attached to.
The final art assets for the pause menu's background ended up being very painterly curtains. While I wanted to stay within the sharp lines of the game's overall aesthetic and the clean designs of the art deco movement, I shared concerns with the producer that we weren't leaning into the 'two different worlds' theme we were creating with the diegetic UI vs the active gameplay levels.
As such, I was given permission to go in a more painterly style. while leaning more into the overall colour themes from the art deco movement.
03
The Main Menu
As with the pause menu, I was allowed to go in a more painterly style for the main menu. That said, due to the turn-around time and health issues, I didn't have as much time to do value tests as I would have liked.
Looking back, while the main menu uses a good variety of colours, they all blend together due to the similar values. I was so concerned with maintaining the tone of noir (if not the monochrome stylings) and not having oversaturated colours, that I went too far in the other direction. If I were to go back and do this again, I would do more value tests with the assets.
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09
The Colour Palette test
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