Penguin mania!

This week started out with three days of being home and sick. After getting on my feet again but not able to get down to school I did what I could: concept art. We had a meeting with Markus last week were we talked a lot about the style of the game. Did the movement system really work with the early concept of the players being rats trying to catch a cheese? The movement system more resembles something that slides in one direction and is unable to stop until all movement points are spent. Or if the player crashes into an obstacle…

So naturally we thought about penguins! Penguins trying to catch the cheese. Well, the cheese might be changed later but for now I did some prototyping with penguins on ice. I have from an early point pictured this game as something quite comical so a very cartoony style would suit it perfectly. It is a fun challange to me as well as this isn’t really my strong suit. At least not the clean lines.

I did some standing penguins but they all looked a bit too serious and stiff. Then it came to me, as all you do in the game is slide around, they have to be in a sliding position. Like this:

If we could do this in a 3D printer and have the player penguin’s goggles in different colors (and maybe capes…) it would be brilliant. We have a good 3D artist in our group so we will have to look into that. I also did a prototype of the playing field and one of the many obstacles that can be placed around the board. As almost anything could get stuck in the ice there is plenty of things that could add to the comical feel I’m after: Toxic barrels, frozen Mammoth, Titanic lifeboat or an igloo of course. This is what I’ve come up with so far: