Veraxus: Visual Development – Bio Mechanical Planet
Our development team has developed three levels including a tutorial level. Each level will have its own theme and interesting mechanics to keep the player immersed in a dynamic and visually interesting world. The tutorial level is the planet’s “Receiving” level where the enemy cells go out to receive info for the planets intelligent AI core. Level 1 is the “Refinery level”. This is where the player will start encountering new hazards and enemy types such as plasma pools and deadly flying drone enemies. Materials collected from destroyed planets are processed here into source material to create new cells. Finally, level 2 is “The Hatchery”. This is where pods are spawned to create new enemy cells and since it is at the core the boss will be there guarding it. We will also be using the beehive hexagonal patterns because the planet itself is a Hive Mind where it’s like a colony with workers for the AI Core. The visuals will also start to change and become more biomechanical as you go deeper into the level because based on the lore the planet itself is absorbing from other things around it and then absorbs it into the core.
Early concept sketches by (1st image) Jaden Stock, (2nd and 3rd image) Lindsey Brown, (Last image) Camille Otto.
Above, you can see how we apply the hexagon theme to the enemies to get an understanding of how they will look in game.
Concept art for the player character’s drop pod drawn by Mitchell Winebrenner.
The design is inspired by Warhammer 40K drop pods which is a tabletop game and the direction for the color and textures Mitchell wanted the pod to match the aesthetics of the main character which has a mixture of the blue cyan glow and using the same textures as the enemies to keep it consistent.
Image capture in Test Scene
Here we have a test scene featuring all current assets in order to evaluate their material, scale, and proportion in context. You can also see the hexagonal patterns applied to some of the assets here as well.
Now that you have the gist of what our game will look like we hope to see you soon at UW-Stout Game Expo on May 2nd, 2022 and experience the full project that our team worked on.