In this game, the player plays as Madelyn, a new hire at… a “painting” company I have yet to name (If you have ideas I am open to hear them, I am not good at naming things :P). This company, though, isn’t really painting company- they are in the secret business of being Blot Rangers. Blots are small creatures that eat the color out of everything they touch! Nobody is really sure where they came from or what exactly they are… but they sure are cute! And loud snorers…..
In this game, the player explores various levels collecting the blots they find in each area. Each level will have 100 blots hidden in various places throughout the space, but you are free to finish the level after you collect at least 30. In order to find these ‘blots’, the player will have to look for objects that are colorless and investigate the area to collect the blot. Once you collect a blot, the items it was “eating” the color from will gain their texture back, giving the player a visual presentation of their progress. At the end of the level, it will inform you how many you collected, and how long it took you- players can take their time and find every one, pick up a few and end the level, or try to get them all as quickly as possible!
For this project, I will be developing a single level set within a small grocery store. This would be the first job the character has been given. Blots will be hidden on the shelves, in produce, and even in the back storage room of the store. The player will also have to find an employee ID to unlock the door to the back room in order to find them all. They will have the ability to pick up, throw, stack, and move items in the store to find and collect the blots in their blot-pack. Heres the layout I have planned for that (Although it seems complex, it has TONS of repeated shapes and models, allowing me to make a space that feels full pretty easily):
The intended audience of this game is 8-12 year olds- I want to use bright colors, silly grocery items, and work with my audio partner to create a quirky and fun audio space for the player to explore. I want items to be stimulating to look at and interact with, and designed the blots and store to reflect this. I also don’t want the gameplay to be too complex, as younger children often have a harder time learning complex mechanics while moving in 3d space, especially in what would be the first level of a game.
I took gameplay inspiration from the early 2000s wii game ‘Elebits’- heres a brief clip of gameplay:
As far as art style, I want a low-poly environment, similar to Katamari Damacy or Donut County. Bright colors, larger shapes, and details only where necessary. Time permitting, I may add more details to the colored textures of items, but for the initial build flat colored objects will work just fine.
Here is my mood board I created for the game:
And here’s my concept art (including a process video for developing the blots)- I may update this post to add more/update sketches throughout the weekend, barring MQP work getting crazy:
I like the style and choice for a range of blue and purple colors. I think it will work for your target audience, some of the sketches fall in a range of being cute and/or creepy (the one with the pointy hat).
What does an area look like without color?
Maybe the company could be Bristles (or Filaments), like on a brush.
I love that name, I might just steal it!!! So as far as the without-color system, each blot will have a trigger collision box. This will run at most a few lines of code that checks if it is triggered or not, and if it is it will set the objects’ triggering it to have a basic white or grey material- think like, default maya or zbrush material. Then, once the player ‘picks it up’, that code will no longer be running, so the objects ‘real’ texture will be revealed.
Love the simple but fun art style you went with! I’m always a fan of simpler, lower poly art styles with lots of color. I can definitely see it resonating with the target audience you mentioned aiming for. Will there be different types of blots that do different types of things? Like different types that tend to hide in different types of places or ones that tend to go after a specific color.
For right now…. no. Each blot will just be floating/sleeping somewhere in the scene. Some may be easier to find, some the player may have to move some objects to find.
Making a game on finding and collecting is a very smart idea, especially when you want to do minimal programming. I also especially like adding colors and textures for that visual indication of progress and feedback. You mentioned that the player will search through various levels to collect all 100 blots. Would you be making multiple scenes of different orientations, or would you use one scene and change where the blots are for different levels?
For this project I am only creating the grocery store level- all of the blots will be in the same place each time you play the level, I dont want to mess around with having different versions of one level for this tbh. If I were to make a longer game from this, there would be different levels in addition to this- maybe a carnival, a playground, a classroom- anything like that.
I love the creative idea! The blots are adorable and I know I would feel bad sucking them up with a vacuum, haha. It reminds me of Slime Rancher in a way! I also love how many different forms the blots take in the concept art – the way you make them sound in the description seems almost flat. I have a couple questions – If there are 100 blots in a small space, won’t the entire place be colourless at first? Are there 100 intractable objects? I’m wondering if maybe you want to lower the number for scope.
Yes, the whole environment will be colorless at first! I think having 100 blots wont be that much larger in scope- I’m only planning on creating the 3 basic models/animations for them (i may have two of each kind, awake and asleep, to add some variety, but that just depends on time really), and just placing them throughout the map in various spaces, but if it becomes too much of a monster I can easily cut this number down 🙂 I also plan on having all of the grocery items have basic physics so the player can move them around and stack them- the grocery items will be repeated tons of times, so the scope on this will be smaller than it looks as well (basically, not every object will be its own ‘object’ persay, most of them will be copies of one base object. I will only have to create/model 20-30 grocery items, and I can always add more/take away depending on how long it takes me). This scope question is also a part of hwy I chose low poly modeling- almost all of these grocery items will be slightly adjusted primitives- the only real complex item modeling I will have to do is the produce, breads, and flowers (if I even end up including that area)
Sorry about the block of text lol
Your idea is really neat and super cute! It reminds me a lot of Slime Rancher with the blots and vacuum pack. I think the style you’ve decided to go with will work great with the concept and fits really well for your intended audience. I was wondering, how large will the blots be in comparison to the character and environment? Since it’s a grocery store, would they be around the size of an orange, melon, or larger (or somewhere in between)?
The blots are going to be somewhere between the size of a ping pong ball and a baseball!! pretty small, but still noticable from a distance
I like the art style a lot. very cute and soft but still has a air of mystique about it. Is the game played in first or third person though, because depending on what you choose, level design and character design could change drastically. Similarly, how small are the Blots (great cute name btw) in comparison to the environment or the player? How difficult would it be to find/capture them in the environment depending on how large they would be?
The blots are going to be somewhere between the size of a ping pong ball and a baseball!! pretty small, but still noticable from a distance. I want it to be fairly easy to find them, as it is geared towards a young audience and this would be the first level. I am also still considering first vs third person, I’m honestly not 100% sure. I am leaning towards first person, as this will make seeing what you’re interacting with easier for a younger audience I think.
The blots sort of reminds me of mini buniculas especially on the sucking colors out of the environment. Are you going to be putting any blots in the game that are actively eating the color? How will they suck on the environment or literally be eating?
I don’t plan on them being actively sucking the color out of anything- they’ll just be lazing about and bein cute, and the stuff around them will be without color. I do have a concept for the boss of this company I’m working on today- she has one on her head actively sucking the color out of her hair, making her blonde- she wont show up as a model in the game, but her sprite may pop up at the beginning of the level to explain briefly what the player is doing. But theyre just lazy little guys who absorb color. I also havent heard of buniculas, looking them up right now!
I love the game concept and the focus on color! It reminds me a bit of the game “de Blob” where you are a blob character tasked with recoloring the world that has been leeched of its color, but yours also has a Ghostbusters feel to it which I love!
Would there be any different kinds of Blots or just the one type?
Theres just gonna be one type, but with 3 different skins- they’ll look different but mechanically will all work the same way
I really like the art style choice for this game, the blots have this clumsy, cute feel to them as they snore away with bits of drool rolling down their mouth. I like the concept of recoloring the world since it would sit very well with your target audience. I was wondering how you are going to tackle the coding and art bit of recoloring an area. Would it simply swap the color of the object back to its original color instantly or in like a wave animation?
I love the playful, but also slightly creepy aesthetic of the blots! Creepy cute dudes. Do you have an idea for the audio aesthetic yet? I know your target audience is younger children, so I could completely imagine an upbeat/spooky tune playing in the background.
I haven’t put much thought into it, other than something upbeat, bubbly, or goofy! I want to talk with my audio partner about it more to develop a better idea of this though 😀 Having a spooky-ish theme sounds like a really good idea tho !!
I really like your design about the motivation of the Blots-eat the color! It is reasonable and looks very cute at the same time. This lovely style will undoubtedly bring a larger audience. Your game reminds me of things like Slime Rancher and Luigi Mansion. At the same time I also have a question: 100 Blots look quite spectacular, but also very cute! How should they be reasonably distributed throughout the room? Since they are slime-like body structures, does this mean that attaching to the ceiling or hiding under the table is a solution to consider? If the size of the room is large enough, will there be differences in the body shapes of the blots: some are only the size of a cherry while others are as strong as a watermelon?
Some immature suggestions!
So many people have said this reminds them of slime rancher which is the highest compliment I could hope to achieve LOL. 100 is honestly just a number I threw out there- I want them to be fairly densely packed in the whole scene, so it may be more or less than 100 in practice- ill see once I begin actually laying out the level! I hadn’t thought about making them different sizes, but having them stuck to surfaces is definitely something I’m looking forward to doing
I really like the concept idea and how you find the blobs are a super creative idea! If you were able to expand the idea more, would you give extra bonuses for collecting more than the minimum of blobs?
Absolutely!! I may end up working on this project longer than the class goes (like over winter break) because I love it so much. A few ideas I had were a home base that had all the blots you collect hanging out and bein happy, and another is the player getting a ‘paycheck’ they can use for skins, longer reach vacuum, etc. but for the scope of this class ill probably stick to a very simple collectathon-like level