La Belle Vendetta RPG

An interactive top-down roleplaying game developed with Unity. This game features a compelling narrative core that draws players into the storyworld of a private investigator through dialogues with NPCs and interaction with various objects, creating a dynamic and captivating gaming experience. My role was the Game Developer and the Environment Designer.

Tools and Skills

• Adobe Photoshop — Building the maps with a tilemap
• Figma — Mocking up the game interface and UI
• Unity3D — Creating the 2D scenes

The first step of the project is to choose a script. La Belle stood out to us with its compelling characters and engaging storyline, making it an ideal choice for adaptation into a video game that will keep players immersed and engaged during the gameplay.

In the preliminary planning stage of the project, we drew inspiration from pixel roleplaying games and decided to adopt a pixelated art style for our game. This choice not only provides players with a retro vibe, but also offers us greater flexibility in designing diverse environments.

In the creation of pixel maps for my game, I utilized a tile map approach in Photoshop, using a tile map called "POP! Horror City." This tile map includes individual tiles representing elements such as walls, floors, objects, and characters in a pixel art style. Using the tile map, I carefully selected and arranged them to create the base layouts of the environments, then filled the environments with objects.

Prior to this project, I had no experience with pixel art and I had to do a lot of exploration myself. While the tile map provided a solid foundation for the maps, I wanted the game's environments to have a polished look, which required careful attention to detail editing at the pixel level with Photoshop.

The tiles were zoomed in closely and adjusted based on their shape and lighting. This process was time-consuming as I experienced with different designs and colours for each pixel. In the end, I was able to design the environments with a consistent aesthetic throughout the game, resulting in visually appealing and immersive environments for players to explore.

Once the game environments were completed, I developed the Unity game with another teammate. I created various game elements Unity's C# code, including an animated loading screen transitions between the menu and the start of the game, the background and tutorial screens for players, and the script to play sound of footsteps when the character is moving, to improve the overall experience.

In the end, the project has been a valuable learning experience that has helped me to improve my skills and collaborate with team members to create a polished video game. I believe that players will enjoy the game and appreciate the approach we took in telling the story of the La Belle murder mystery.