GB Jam 11
Detective Boy Roe

Artist

Team Project | 2023 (10 Days)

A Space Age Mystery! A Gameboy-inspired detective adventure-puzzler! Made for the GB Jam 11 Game jam, over the course of 10 days by a team of three.

Responsibilities
My roles included:
  • Developing MVP
  • User Flows
  • Wireframing
  • Design Systems
  • High Fidelity Prototyping
  • Team Leader
Play on itch.io
Tools
Aseprite
Procreate
About GB Jam 11
Context
Gb Jam 11 is a game jam from itch.io that had participants create a Gameboy inspired game over the course of 10 days.

For the 11th iteration of the game jam the theme was “space” so our group met the night of the start date and brainstormed different ideas and delegated roles. The team went with creating a detective-style top down adventure.

The player would explore a space and then collect clues to eventually make a deduction at the end of the game.

The team involved myself (artist), Malik (programmer), Angel (writing, sound design).
Role in the team
Coming from a fine art background and the fastest artist, I was assigned to creating all of the 2D assets within the game. This would include sprites, UI assets, backgrounds, set pieces and full screen splash images.
Screenshots of the finished game | Sprites of the player character
Key Deliverables
As the sole artist of the game, I had to complete all of assets as quickly as possible so we could implement the designs.
All of the character sprites and Ui assets tied to the characters.
Environments and room layout.
Splash images to help tell the story of the game better.
2D assets: Sprites | UI Assets
Challenges of designing for a Gameboy
Since we were designing a game for the Gameboy, there were restrictions that were set in place in order for our game to emulate the “Gameboy Soul”.


This included having a restricted color palette of only 5 colors total (and some colors were not usable in certain scenarios).

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Another restriction was to design within a small canvas of 144px x 160px (16px x 16px for sprites)


Overall it was a interesting challenge that really pushed me to try to convey as much personality and distinction with a very limited medium.
Concepts for the Player Character
Our main character is an alien that has watched one too many earth noir movies and is now obsessed with being a detective himself. Along for the ride, is his robotic companion that is meant to be the foil to his antics.

I drew up some rough silhouettes that conveyed the rough idea of their character designs so that I could easily have a baseline for their pixel form and sprite.

The first draft of sprites were actually 32x32 pixels, but we couldn’t implement it into our game engine so I had to take the design and compress the details into 16x16 pixels.
Creating Sprites
I had to create a total of 10 different character sprites (3 with walk cycles). This was also my first time using Aseprite for pixel art, so I had the joy of learning a new program!


Aseprite was relatively easy to learn and allowed me to easily animate anything pixel related, so making a walk cycle was, “a walk in the park”.


After the first few sprite sheets, I was able to easily complete all of the sprites within 4 days and started devoting my time to the UI assets.
All of the sprites that were made for the game project
Creating UI
Since we were making an adventure detective game, there would be a lot of dialogue. I was in charge of providing a cursor, dialogue boxes and avatar pictures.


Using Malik’s font design, we were able to make clean looking dialogue boxes what were easy to read and also fun to look at. Giving character to the boxes with slight shading and highlights and allowing the avatar heads break the box, gave the experience a more interesting feel.
Example dialogue boxes
2D Assets: Environments
Modular Rooms
After completing the main 2D assets, I moved on to work on the environments and backgrounds.
I decided to make a room that was modular so that I could easily swap the entry points and systemize the size of the space needed.


This allowed me to save a lot of time, instead of drawing each of the 7 rooms from scratch, I could just change the entry points and do small visual adjustments to make the space feel unique!
2D Assets: Splash Images
Full screen pixel illustrations
All that was left was to create full screen images that we could throw in around the game to make the play experience more engaging.


This included:
- A logo screen
- A menu splash
- A good and bad ending screen
- A painting that the player could interact with
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After doing sprites within Aseprite, I was able to easily draw full screen images, the only challenge was learning how to simplify the illustrations and efficiently use the space.

There were many times where we had to reduce the image due to the game engine’s tile limit, forcing me to simplify the complexity of the illustrations.
Examples of all of the final splash images used within the game.
The Results
48th out of 400!
After play testing the game within the team and within small groups of people, we were ready to submit our game to the game jam.


Overall, it was a great experience where I had the pleasure of working with other talented people and learn more about the process of making a game from start to finish.
Check out the game here
Play on itch.io
Key Learnings
Over the course of 10 days, I was able to be part of creating a game from start to end! It was an invigorating experience that I am excited to do again! But there are things that I learned for the future game jams I do.
Organization is everything.
Being able to have a checklist is helpful and helps keeps things organized.
You need to be willing to learn new skills to help fill in the gaps where the team might be lacking.
Have fun with it!
Design Team
Nathaniel Lee
2D Artist | UI Assets
Malik Walker
Programming | Game Design | UI Assets
Angelika Deocampo
Writing | Sound Design
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