Future Skills and a new Project

In my 2 to 3 years studying at uni, I've gained a handful of experience with Game Design, Unity, 2D art and not to mention Graphic Design.

However, there are also many things that I lack experience in (that are beneficial for the role) such as Programming, Photoshop, 3D Art & Modelling, Publishing a game, Project Management or 2D Animation. According to many employers found on LinkedIn or SEEK, these things are very favourable and you can become highly employable as a Game Artist/Designer if you have this set of skills.

So what else to target my weakness with than a new project?

As ambitious as it may be, I'm aiming to create a game that requires all of the aforementioned skills so that I can fill that gap in my repertoire.

Essentially, my goal is to develop and publish a video game that acts as a piece of interactive art. It should allow the player to explore a scene where they will be allowed to gather their own meanings of said scene.

So here's the breakdown:

It's an adventure-exploration 2D-3D platformer game where you play as a character in a picture book. The character sprites are 2D and appear paper-like and the environment made up of is low-poly 3D models. The world is set in a foresty-fantasy setting where a lot of the assets are reusable - like trees, rocks, grass etc. And there won't be any complicated mechanics, but the player should still be able to interact with the world in some way.

Low poly designs by dibvby0

Gaining inspiration from games like Inside, Ori, Gris, Octopath Traveler, Journey and Florance, there should be an emphasis on world building and storytelling in the environment (rather than through text or otherwise).

Ori in the Blind Forest

From left to right, top to bottom: Octopath Traveler, Gris, Journey, Inside, Florence

So what am I using to make this project?

I'm going to be using the Unity game engine alongside both Photoshop and Blender for my art assets. I'm going to be learning Photoshop and Blender almost from scratch but it's something that I want to attempt at the very least.

Other than that, I'm going to be using Trello as my project management tool and github for version control.

This sounds like a lot of work, are you sure you can finish on time!?

Ideally, at the end of the 7-8 week development cycle, I would have a finished game to publish on itch and/or steam, but if things go awry, I can still show evidence of the skills that I wanted to work on. For example, 3D models that I've made can be shown individually, the 2D sprites I would have created in photoshop will give me experience with the tool, I would have gained experience with prototyping a functional player character with events and I would still have documentation of project management tools used during development. The only thing missing would be publishing the game itself - but that can also be done in my own time when I'm not restricted by uni deadlines.

That being said, a lot of the assets I'm planning on creating are easily reusable and should account for a large portion of the environment, and the mechanics are going to be very basic and shouldn't require too much time to complete. I believe the biggest time would likely go towards 2D sprites and animation - since I have little experience with both photoshop and animating in unity.

Overall, if done correctly - and not blown out of proportion - the project should be completed within the time given.