Lark: A project about melancholy

Lark is game demo that I developed with a couple friends from the Halo Heroes project and a few new people we added to the team. The concept of Lark came from our discussions about depression and anxiety, where seemingly simple daily tasks become monumental efforts. We wanted to create a game that addressed this feeling but would also provide a therapeutic experience for someone struggling with mental health. We settled on the idea of a rhythm game, using music and mobile drag gestures to put players in a positive “flow.” We particularly liked this idea as it is in stark contrast to typical rhythm games where the game inevitably becomes rapid and fast-paced.

As a small group, many of us worked on multiple facets of the project. I was primarily responsible for art direction, art production for the environment and character, UX, and narrative.

DEFINING STYLE

I created a moodboard that I felt would capture the emotions of the gameplay. Some of the images I focused on in the moodboard were images of winter sunrises. This color metaphor seemed appropriate as the pastel color palette softens the gameplay experience. I wanted colors that were muted to acknowledge the character’s mental state but also wanted to avoid too many dark colors that would hinder the positive and calming emotional experience we wanted for the player.

I also took heavy inspiration from stained glass art to help define the style. We all loved the idea of expressing a bit of fragility by invoking the idea of stained glass pieces.

SCOPE SCOPE SCOPE

Our original concept for the game was to develop an entire apartment that would serve as the hub area to complete a successful morning routine. Starting from the bedroom the player would leave this initial level and move to the hub where they could interact with other rooms and objects. We had originally wanted a point system to provide positive reinforcement for tasks that the player completed. We also decided to work in 2D as we didn’t have any artists adept at 3D work. This presented perspective challenges and eventually we decided to let each object have its own perspective point to account for the inability to adjust perspective based on the character and camera movement. However do to time constraints, the entire game was eventually scoped down to just a demo of the bedroom.

MAKING ASSETS

I sketched out and scanned each object before creating the assets in Illustrator using a palette of colors that I felt would create harmony. Because we were working in 2D, I had to bake “light” directly into the assets.

Using an artboard the size of the game’s side scrolling space, I placed the objects and resized them as needed to account for the sprite dimensions. When working on the wall and floor, I started by mocking up colors that I felt could possibly work. While I generally kept most of these the same, I had to make adjustments for the wallpaper and floor design as they began to feel busy and overwhelming once starting to tile.

Finalizing the bedroom meant making overall color adjustments to various assets to make the entire scene more unified. In order to accommodate for various states of the bedroom as the player began completing tasks, I created 5 total bedroom scenes with varying degrees of completeness from the messy bedroom to the bedroom having been completely tidied up.

As one of two artists, we split work between the bedroom scene and the rhythm game. I eventually also picked up work for the character’s walking cycle sprite sheet. Basing it on my art partner’s original mocks, I created the below sprites, using a bit more vibrant colors to help differentiate the character.

A BIT OF POETRY

Because so much of our original concept was cut, we decided to fill in the narrative with poetry. I wrote several small poems that would appear throughout the game. These words were meant to help us convey to the player the anxieties of the Lark character and provide positive messaging to close out the demo.

The poem on the right appears in the beginning of the game as the character is dreaming about being in a boat about to make it to shore.

Take it slow, please take it slow...

It's a shallow sea and the water is getting low.

I just want to make it out alive. Just want to feel alive.

Staring down the sand. I don't have a plan.

The closer I get to land. I don't have a plan.

Because the game would not be able to be published in app stores due to incompleteness, we decided to publish on Itch.io. While preferably the user would download and play on a mobile device to get the full experience, it is playable on a computer. I created a few more assets to help round out what we would need for deliverables on Itch.io including a game icon, banners for the Itch page, and a logo for our game dev group which we called Spite Studios.

Inevitably, we found the process for this game demo was much longer than expected and so much more difficult. While I’d say that I’m happy with the results, there are definite bugs in the UI of the rhythm game that we never got around to fixing before we had to conclude the work. This was overall and incredible learning experience and I’m humbled at how difficult it is to create a game.