This game centers around an orphan girl who sneaks onto a train with her sister. They fall asleep and upon waking, the main character discovers her sister missing. The player travels through the train cars, interacting with colorful characters, gathering objects, and finding clues while trying to avoid the Ticket Man. Her final task is to choose the train stop where she thinks her sister is hiding, informed by clues gathered during conversations with the other passengers.
I served the team by creating the stylized cut scenes and the 8-bit portion of the game. The 8-bit scene happens when the player interacts with an old arcade machine. Ticket Man follows them into the machine, which prompts a Super Mario-style gameplay. When the player makes it around the Ticket Man and onto the roof of a train, a cut scene shows the pursuit, and the orphan girl dons a disguise just in time to fool the antagonist. Throughout the journey, the player has gathered pieces of a shredded ticket which the character reassembles and uses to gain passage to a train stop of their choosing. When deciding at which of the three stops that the girl should disembark, the player must remember clues given by NPC's that they have interacted with on the train. The game resolves when the player chooses the correct stop and finds her sister at an orphanage.
* These scenes contain audio
Opening scene
8-Bit gameplay, climax scene, and final decision.
I created the 8-bit car and characters, assembled them in Unreal Engine and hand drew the entire cut scene. The captioning and "Choose Your Destination" card which were added by a teammate.
I modeled this train car in Blender 3D and textured the objects using UV maps, which were illustrated by hand in Procreate. My goal was to create a scene which looked artificial and eerie, rather than warm and summery as it was "supposed" to be. In the final version for gameplay, the center sunflower is an NPC that requests a scoop of water from the bucket and rewards the player with a carrot. The sunflower's idle state is on the left and the speaking state is on the right.
Supporting Media
This section contains detail shots and process images from my own work.
8-Bit Parallax background
Ticket Man Character Design
Main Character Design
The standard character was created by a teammate, Benjamin Biedrzycki, which I adapted to an 8-bit version.
Concept Art & Style Tests
