Captain Goosebumps

We created an infinite world of floating islands that repeats randomly. These islands are made of simple shapes and share the same palette of inviting colors.

Each one is inspired by a different region of the world to emphasize diversity.

When sliding through the landscape, the goose will bring the light behind him and gradually reveal the colors, until they are all unlocked.

The goose symbolises the long journey undertaken by refugees. We wanted it to be proud, colorful, dynamic, and expressive.

Even though the game is mainly 2 dimensional (2.5D to be more accurate), we used Blender 3D to model the goose, create it’s skeleton and animate its poses and movements.

The development of video games doesn’t usually start with the art direction. Instead we create a visually simplified playable version to validate the gameplay, solve the main technical challenges, and explore various hypotheses.

An example of these challenges is the creation of an infinite curved and smooth track that doesn’t overload the cpu of the device.

To do so, we divided the path into smaller segments that simply disappear once they leave the screen. We also had to make sure that the beginning of each segment matched the end the previous one.

Bringing together art, design, animation, and sound into a working prototype always takes more time than expected. It’s a bit like cooking without a complete recipe: you’re working with great ingredients, but the right proportions are unknown. Every project is unique, and there’s no foolproof formula to follow.

That’s why developers build custom tools that allow designers to tweak effects, pacing, and difficulty on the fly during live gameplay.

This process is highly iterative. After each fine-tuning session, we submit the updated version to a small group of testers. Their feedback helps us validate (or challenge) our assumptions. We repeat this cycle until we land on a game that’s not only fun to play, but also true to our original goal: raising awareness for the Live in Color cause.