Just wanted to make a post-mortem to maybe help others looking for art direction in future projects.

For our game On The Fly we ended up winning 1st Place in the graphics category as well as reaching 474 downloads on itch.io as of the time of this post! Wow! I did the art @Flightyfelon and my friend Josh @qkjosh did the programming and sound effects.

Getting Inspired

For us, after hearing the theme we set out to create our Game Pillars. We decided that we wanted to create a chill game about birds going down a river, with noodle necks inspired by wild birds striking silly poses.

We also wanted the two incompatible themes we chose to support these feelings in some way so we came up with Endless Runner and Dating Sim, to support our game's Two Pillars:

1 - Relaxation/Zen

2 - Noodle Neck Physics

And thus we got started on prototyping! As Josh prototyped the gameplay, I began prototyping the art. Starting with a Keyframe.

Sketching something out is CRUCIAL. Because until you do you have no idea how the idea in your mind will play out. Also, you can now actually direct the rest of your team towards your vision.

For example: Because of the keyframe we were able to fine-tune the perspective of the camera and world early-on.

Working Through it.

As Josh moved ahead with making the birds move side-to-side we kept passing the project back and forth with Unity's Collab functionality, making sure that at each step it was getting more fun to play and always staying true to our established pillars.

I started with the most important part of the game: The Characters. Trying to make sure they read very clearly from front and back since they'd be viewed from both sides. Actually, people found that the sparrow did not read well at all from the back and thought she looked like a girl with pigtails. Because of this, they were confused about the game's mechanics and didn't try to use the game's swap-birds function. See how important silhouette is?

Anyways, once we'd gotten the basic functionality down we could start polishing. This was around the middle of the second day and involved a lot of plants and insects and a very nerve-wracking function for Josh called the BugGenerator(); Yikes haha!

Around here we also mocked out the dialogue system. This was a time where a lot of ideas came and went. The important thing was to keep comparing the ideas to the game pillars and the keyframe.

For example, late into the jam we realized we would only have time for the dialogue system OR an end-state. We decided to not have an end-state because:

A) It would be against our first pillar of Zen/Relaxation

B) It would take away from the themes we'd set out with by making our endless runner less endless and also because the dialogue system was central to our dating sim section.

In a perfect world, we'd love to have had time for both. But we didn't. I think we made the right decision.

So now things are in place! Magnefique! Now let's look at polish.

Polish

Once the main art had wrapped up and Josh was chugging through finishing the dialogue system, I wanted to fine-tune the environment and simulate the passage of time by creating a day-night cycle. Together we were able to polish everything from the lighting to the textures to the little ripples the kettle left behing in the water.

At this point everything was pretty much done!

All that was left was UI and making sure the animations for the birds and bugs didn't break too too often. ;P

In Conclusion

Are there things we could have added? Definitely. It would have been great to have a completely finished game that had integrated the endless runner and dating sim mechanics more fully. Or had the bird's answers to the questions create a more noticeable effect on their relationship and change over time. But oh well. I'm very happy with how the whole game turned out and Josh is too. Hopefully one or both of us can make it back for the next jam and create a whole new adventure! ^_^ Hope this was a bit helpful!

If you still haven't played our game feel free to check it out on itch.io: Here