The game was part of a student project, where our only prompt was to follow an Ukiyo-e artstyle. For this project, I worked as a Designer, Developer, Shader Artist, SFX, and VFX specialist.

The concept was developed around 'Yokai', who are part of Japanese Folklore, and are different forms of ghosts or spirits.

You play as an prison escapee, who comes across a lonely house, where he meets a mysterious lady. The game is carried forward using dialogues, where the player often has choices for their interactions.

The game has a total of 8 endings, which is based on the dialogues you choose through the game.  The different dialogue streams not only define what is going to happen, but are also used to establish a backstory for the player, which decides your personality and dialogues later on in the game.

The game was a part of an interdisciplinary project, where I got a chance to collaborate with students who are perusing courses like 2D animation, pre-visualisation, etc in my college. The game was an assignment, where we were free to make anything we wanted, but we chose a game to tell an interactive story, and have the artstyle come alive in a 3D approach.

The game took a total of one month to plan and execute. I had been really intrigued by visual novels, and horror based indie game, with a quick playthrough. I really liked the concept of telling a short story visually in form of a game, in a very short duration of time, which eventually became a base of our game. During the first two weeks, we crunched ideas about story, gameplay and artstyle. Over here, I developed a demo for how I wanted the game to look like, and pitched it to my teammates.

While working on the artstyle, we also were looking for good stories and how we can adapt it in a game. While researching, we came across the tale of Kuchisake-Onna, a Yokai, who'se most recognizable factor is a huge scar on her face, much like Joker (from The Dark Knight). When she settles on a 'prey' she does the same to them, and made them like her.

After deciding the tale to draw inspiration from, we started throwing around ideas about the story and narrative progression, where we came up with the concept, where the player plays an injured convict, on the run. To make things interesting, we also let the player decide the backstory. This is where production started.

I worked on developing a dialogue system for the game, as well as working on the visual styling of the game. For the dialogue system, I used Scriptable Objects in Unity, through which I developed tools, to aid the whole dialogue system, including dialogue trees and outcomes. Upon receiving the 3D models from our artist, I started to apply the shader I had created earlier for the Ukiyo-e look.

To make the environment look like the artsyle, I had to make a lot of tweaks in the models and shaders, to make it all a cohesive ecosystem, where there were minimal inconsistencies. 

For the Yokai, I had our 2D character artists work on different poses, for different emotions, and situations. There were a total of 15-19 unique poses, all hand-drawn in an Ukiyo-e artstyle. In game, the Yokai character always faces the player, inciting the feeling of always being watches, which enhances the overall 'creepiness' factor.

Outside part of the game 

(modelled by Gautham)

Character Sheet for Kichusuke-Onna

(Fayas, Shania, Rohan)

Wall decorations 1, Western Paintings in Ukiyo-e artstyle

(Diwas)