Crumbs
Crumbs is a maze solving game, loosely based on the tale of Hansel and Gretel. I created it as a programming assignment in my first year of University, then did a graphical overhaul of the game several years later with my own pixel sprite artwork.
The goal is to traverse a maze during the day, dropping crumbs on your way as markers. Once the player reaches the end, night falls and these markers are used to find the way back to the start. To make this an interesting challenge, I set the screen to tint blue, add some parallax scrolling mist, add a strong vignette around and zoom in on the player character when night falls. This creates a very effective "spooky" and claustrophobic ambience, making it very easy to get lost in the once deceptively simple mazes.
One of my main goals in creating this game was to have a start screen that clearly communicated how the game is played without using on-screen instructions. My solution was to reflect the actual gameplay by having the main character patrolling back and forth, dropping crumbs when going to the right and collecting them as he travels left. I created graphics for the appropriate buttons which light up as the character performs the appropriate action; For example the space bar lights up each time a crumb is dropped. Furthermore, the screen gets darker the further the character gets to the right, as night falls.
Something I particularly enjoyed in the re-skin was designing the tree sprite. I experimented with several different techniques and approaches in order to achieve the desired result - a simple tree sprite with implied detail that doesn't appear messy when placed in groups. Check it out by itself over on Dribbble!
Programs used:
Photoshop, Processing
Project Specifics
Pixel Art, Sprite Animation, Programming, Game Design