Camp Splinterwood is a 3D horror adventure game set in the 80s at an abandoned summer camp. The player must navigate through this camp, solving puzzles, finding items, reading notes, and collecting car parts to escape. However, there is a mysterious monster hiding in the shadows that is chasing the player. The player must use their hand crank flashlight to drive it back into the shadows.
This was a game I worked on throughout the 2023 fall semester. I was on a team of 10 students, serving as the project's lead artist and UX designer.
This was the first project that went through the whole game development cycle, from prototype, alpha, beta, and gold. With each new build submitted my by team, we would get feedback from both our professor as well as our fellow students.
As the Art and UI Lead for the project, it was my responsibility to not only give the final call on artistic decisions, but to also manage my team, delegate tasks, and to make sure everyone on my team had a specific part of the project to focus on, whether that be concept sketches, 3D modeling, or even sound design.
I began planning for the project by creating various sketches of both the monster, as well as details on how different aspects of the game would work. These sketches would prove vital to myself as well as the programmers, who often would use them as reference when implementing the UI.
Once out of the concepting phase, my team began 3D modeling/rigging and started work on various UI assets like the inventory, notes, item pickup topper, and on screen UI. For the project's visuals, my team went for a very “sketchy” style, with a lot of stray lines, smudges, and scribbles. This artistic choice carried to every aspect of the game when possible, being seen in the art, UI, and textures. At this point we also began experimenting with filters that can be applied to the game to emulate the look of a classic PlayStation game.
This was the standard process my team would go through: I would handle various UI elements, testing in engine, as well as getting user feedback, while my art team and the rest of the team would focus on their various tasks. There would be moments where our professor would playtest and make various comments on the gameplay, how the mechanics functioned, the production value, and more. Each time he did so, we would take careful note, fixing bugs, removing needless mechanics, and fleshing out various aspects of the game.
As we went through the various key builds, my team would keep building on the game, adding new mechanics, improving the monster pathing, making new art assets and so forth until reaching the final gold build.
