Title Screen of Ethereal
My role: title screen, character designer, scriptwriter
ETHEREAL is a group project consisting of proposing a mobile game prototype targeted at youths. Incorporating aspects of traditional and historical art pieces and their backgrounds into the game's narrative and goals, the aim was to rekindle youth's appreciation for the arts.
The main character starts off in a dark cave and eventually encounters monsters and has to fend them off. The quirky weapons range from paint brushes to paint guns, and more. As the player progresses, the locations become more vibrant and beautiful, but the monsters increasingly become more hideous and ferocious. The thought behind this was the struggles of artists in a society such as Singapore, where academics are very much prioritised above many things. The monsters represent people who reject such creatives, which is why the main character starts off in a dark cave - trying to subdue their inner creative instincts and ambitions.
The player's goals are to obtain better lanterns (a reflection of the artist's vision and soul) and weapons in order to defeat the evolving monsters, all the while collecting lost art pieces that they can view at any point in time in the inventory. The intention of this was to ensure that while it's the genre of an action game, the educational message is still present. Additional NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) were also planned, and the player can take quests from them and possibly revert monsters back to humans and obtain new lanterns, art pieces and equipment.
Background sketches, done by Jazmine Ho Lei
