City Life was a merging city builder game where the player built a city by harvesting resources, placing building, then merging the buildings to level them up. I was a Senior Concept Artist on this project, and one of the ongoing challenges was making the most common elements of the game seem charming from level 01 to level 15 (max levels).

Below you will find all 15 levels of the buildings I worked on and was approved at the time of my exit about 18 months into production, where I left to become Lead Concept Artist at Wicked Realms Studios/Tilting Point Games

I have included some of the sketches for the leveling up for levels 06 through 10 and specific concept development of Level 06. Each iteration was a push and pull effort of where we wanted to emphasize our chunkier style, where to put the beveled edges (a trickier problem than initially thought), and how to infuse charm and joy into every asset.

I assembled a range of buildings that represented our core tenants: Charm, character, and interesting details. If we could get two out of three we were good. Three out of three and we were golden!

These homes were based on a "typical" home found here in the United States. From the single floor, small footprint "starter home" to the full on classical family home at level 04. Level 05 was a challenge as we had to keep the footprint at a 1x1 so we had to go a little atypical and start building "up". The key was to keep the proportions and while increasing the details, keep the feel of a single family home before transitioning the home level into an apartment complex.

Each progressive level we needed to add complexity with keeping a clear design and (mostly) unique silhouette. I really pushed my rendering, as there were no 3d elements or  used in this process. I am not sure how smart or efficient that was and I think I would lean more heavily on 3d going forward, but it really helped my rendering of materials and lighting and matching my concepts to our final 3d models.