'Shibuya Machine' - Shibuya Under Siege
The namesake district Shibuya Machine's setting is based in was next in terms of development - As this was simply a backdrop, I wanted to have it avoid being too overtly distracting or off-putting with too many bright colours, so I opted for a muted palette and a dark, night-time setting to fit the feel of the rest of the game.
I'm not all too happy with how the finalised backdrop came out; I feel as though the odd floating portions of buildings and random neon lighting were slightly TOO spontaneous and strange, and I failed to capture the essence of a huge shopping district like Shibuya. I left unique aspects of the level, such as advertisement billboards and general street-signs, to be developed as separate assets not integrated into the background. This let me vary up the layout and visuals of the level as I saw fit, despite the fairly rigid background tile.
Really quick mock-ups of a scenario and layout for the scene; since I had already settled on the concept, all that remained was the execution of it.
The fun part - designing a huge laser beam, signifying the malfunction of a machine integral to the game's plot. Experimentation with different hues and shapes.
Various further developmental set-pieces and background layouts. I tried out differently-shaped foreground and mid-ground buildings and platforms, as a means of 'mixing up' a player's experience.
The fully-completed backdrop, created using various developmental aspects from the prior sheet as a base to work from. My favourite part was rendering out the sun-set, in all honesty.
A finalised mid-ground tile; as the player would be operating on this layer of buildings, I wanted something that was easy to string together into a larger tile whilst also not being too distracting design-wise.
The completed foreground-tile. I kept these very dark, saturated and blurred as their role was solely to add more depth to the level and make the Shibuya district feel denser, rather than having any sort of gameplay value.