The Cafe HOT. Game
This game was a partnership project between the Cafe HOT. (A Burlington, VT. business) and Hard Pill Productions (The studio I was working with).
The request from the Cafe HOT:
- A short, FPS level set in their restaurant where the player defeats their characters. Inspired by Doom 1993’s iconic E1M1 level
On this project, I was the lead level designer & 3D Environmental artist. I am not an artist, so this project taught me a lot about 3D modeling. Every modeled asset in the game was done by me, but all 2D art assets are assets the Cafe HOT. already owned.
Skills: Game Design, Level Design, 3D Environmental Art, ProBuilder
Art Process Walk Through
The process started with taking pictures. I took pictures of anything and everything in the restaurant. From there, I drafted the first LDD, just a simple layout, and created a block out of the foundation structure in the game.
After the level was blocked out based on accuracy to the real place, I then went back to those pictures and made an in-depth art asset list based on the most common items in the shop. Then I went back to the LDD and tweaked it to be more in-depth.
I was originally planning on making all of the models in Maya, but after realizing just how many assets there would be, I decided to make the majority of them with Unity's ProBuilder. This allowed me to build & texture much more easily. I didn't have to worry too much about details because of the game's pixelation feature.
After the major models were done, I went back to the pictures and analyzed the artistic through-line of the restaurant based on its design. I found that skeletons, cobwebs, and eyes were common visual themes. So, I added those to the kitchen to make it feel more cohesive with the cafe.
Skills: Game Art, Pipeline, 3D Environmental Art, ProBuilder, Analysis and Iteration
Documentation
Creative Document
The Creative Document was the overall, initial plan for the game. This is where all the design work was documented, and it went through a lot of changes as we kept the Cafe HOT. in communication throughout. We were constantly iterating because of that.
Skills: Game Design, Documentation, and Iteration
Level Design Document
I was in charge of creating the level layout, which was mainly about taking the current layout of the restaurant and figuring out how to enhance it to make a fun level.
Skills: Level Design, Documentation, Re-contextualization
Art Asset List & Hours Tracker
The art asset list changed a lot throughout production as I found more and more aspects of the restaurant I wanted to represent. The list originally appeared in the Creative Document, but since I was the sole artist, I decided to move it to a spreadsheet to track what was done.
Skills: Project Planning, Documentation, and Iteration
