RELIC – Postmortem (Graphics)

RELIC is available to play HERE

Having done 3D for my last entry as well as it being what I do for a living, I decided I wanted to give a 2D game a try. I’ve dabbled in 2D game sprites in the past since I was quite young, but not for a very long time. I had also never done proper sprite animations before, so this was new to me.

I wanted to try out a program that allowed me to do pixel graphics easier than Photoshop would allow, so I tried out Piskel which is a free pixel graphics and animation program. It seemed quite buggy and left a lot to be desired, however it got the job done. I’d be okay using it again however I’d prefer trying out other programs as well. Photoshop was used for the environment graphics.

My general art style is usually minimalistic and clean, and “moody” aesthetics are very important to me. So the environment in RELIC reflected this, with a fairly minimalistic background environment with a bit of depth (unfortunately couldn’t get parallax implemented which would’ve been a nice touch). I really LOVE space, so I enjoyed making these environments.

After the basic environment was done I added the floating rocks and lava as a small gameplay challenge. So much more could’ve been done here:

My inspiration for my anti-hero’s suit was none other than the space suits from my favourite show, Firefly (<3):

The monolith was inspired by 2001:

My robotic hero was not really inspired by anything in particular, though I suppose the smart-ass AIs from games like Portal probably had a subconscious influence on his personality. I knew I wanted him to have a very floaty, “orbital” appearance. It was mostly trial and error to make him:

The menu and general graphics also had a very minimalistic style. I quite like the colour scheme that came out:

Overall, I’m very happy with how the game came out visually although my goal for next time is having a bit more detail in the sprites, and (way) better animations.

Stay tuned for more postmortems!

– Camille

RELIC is available to play HERE