Theme Part (1) 'The Crying Man': Reason behind the background choice

I think I'm finally there in terms of finishing off the artistic look for 'The Crying Man'. Although I'm not quite finished on the game mechanics, getting the artwork done is certainly the break I needed after the burn out of last weeks prototype, which all in all didn't go too bad!

The look and feel of a game is very important to me, achieving a interesting look for a game is an interesting challenge that I thrive off. 'The crying man' was certainly no exception. Obviously the theme I choose for my project was 'virus' and therefore I needed to create the illusion that you were playing inside a computer. It took several iterations to get to this stage but I'm almost there. Here are some of the earlier concepts, and then to what I have now.

I gathered a lot of inspiration for this first prototype from a game called Jetpack Joyride by Half Brick studios. However my real problem lied with the shelving on either side of the image, it almost looked like a platform the player could jump on and that was something I wasn't going for with my game. I almost had no obvious way for the player to retrieve files as part of the game.

In this iteration I added the two portals the player can access and jump up and down on in order to retrieve files. I liked the animation I created for them too, I find that the more you have moving on the screen the more your scene comes to life.

For me in the two previous versions of the background they were simply too plain. Originally I had the idea of breaking up the solid grey wall with some simple lines and adding rivets and accidentally stumbled across this which I think personally looks awesome. It reminds me of a motherboard and really creates that computer feel. The vaults to the left on the other hand I'm still uncertain about. I like how it creates the idea that the files are valuable and worthy of protection, but at the same time I'm not quite sure if it works with the computer theme. Notice how the vaults are significantly smaller and it creates a 3-D effect.

I continued with the vault theme on the other side and spiced it up a little bit with more of the motherboard look in the centre. Personally I really like this final product and I think it gets across my theme well. It still needs a few touches here and there but it's definitely worthy of publishing.