Zaiva the Game

Pixel art video game for Arcadia BOSK

Team

Koen Kribben (Designer) / Karlijn Suurd (Project Manager) / Fauve Vlegels (Designer + Programmer) / Brent Vos (Programmer) / Jamie Yin (Lead Designer)

Timeline

February 2022 - April 2022

BSc Communication & Multimedia Design

Year 2 Semester 2

Skills

Concept Development

Graphic Design

Art Direction

The organisers of Leeuwarden-Fryslân 2018 (the European Capital of Culture in 2018) will bring the first edition of the triennial Arcadia in 2022. This sequel to LF2018 consists of a 100-day cultural programme, through which the organisation calls attention to the future of mienskip (society), landscape and heritage. Arcadia 2022 lasts from 7 May until 14 August 2022. BOSK is one of the programme components of Arcadia and is a slow-moving art installation, a slow-walking forest of more than 1,000 trees, that travels the streets of Leeuwarden for 100 days. BOSK will be graced by cultural activities that reinforce the story of the walking forest. BOSK draws attention to the need to look differently at the relationship between humans and nature. In addition, the forest is the booster of all kinds of green initiatives in the city centre and the suburbs of Leeuwarden, and in the province of Fryslân.
BOSK is graced by cultural activities that reinforce the story of the walking forest. BOSK draws attention to the need to look differently at the relationship between man and nature. In addition, the forest is the driving force behind all kinds of green initiatives in the center and suburbs of Leeuwarden, and in the province of Fryslân. BOSK also focuses on children and young people, because they are the inhabitants of the future Friesland.
Develop a creative and interactive prototype for a young audience. There will be an educational program for primary education in the entire province that can be carried out at school and/or in one's own living environment. The basis of the educational program is 'the journey of the seedlings'. How do you bring the story and the journey of the seedlings to the children in groups 5 to 8 with the help of the new technology?

During this project I was in charge of the art direction, this included not only the looks of the game, but also the animated videos and user interface. Outside of this director role I was also the person who created the world you can see while playing through our story in-game. For this I learned how to make pixel art and tile sets, making a lot of progress in my skills by building the map and scenes in Unity and working closely with our leading programmer. Post-processing in Unity, making pixel art quest item assets and in-game animations were also included in my list of tasks.

Being in charge of the level design of Zaiva, I made sure every quest was connected and didn't contain any bugs or mishaps that could break the game or ruin the player's experience. I also made sure there was a lot of interaction with the whole cast of the NPCs during the whole game and made sure the whole story was not only interactive, but also educational for our target audience.

I was also greatly involved in the storytelling, game design and world building during the whole project. The game is playable here!

My creations for the project

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My creations for the project ↓

Softwares used

Visualising core moments in our story through art made in Photoshop

C# Programming

Game Design

C#

Ps