Ivy's Journey | A Low-Poly 3rd Person Fantasy RPG

Ivy's Journey - a 3rd-Person Low-poly RPG Adventure

Ivy's journey is a 3rd person Low-poly RPG game following the adventure of Ivy through the spiritual world where she must fight creatures to achieve elemental equality in the world by collecting all the items and destroying the two elemental spirits.

Download it on itch.io: https://oriolm11.itch.io/ivys-journey

In the beginning of the the project, our main idea was to create a procedural world (it renders throughout the movement of the player) where exploration would be crucial to progressing in the game. In Ivy's Journey, we control Ivy - an elf which has the objective of maintaining the spirit power balanced.

Throughout the world, we can also see some shops where Ivy can buy potions and also buffs (items that enhance her attack or her defense).

Early process of the semi Open-World of Ivy's Journey (in-engine)

Initial Concepts

Initial concept of a Main Camp of Ivy's Journey

Initially, we thought that the Concept of the various UI (User Interface) and HUD (Heads Up Display) should be simple and minimalist giving the theme of the game - low-poly and simple in its core.

The Main Menu was thought that Ivy (the main character) and the camera would be pointing to the main initial spot. The idea was to create a Shadow of the Colossus alike transition where you would click to 'Play' and the character would stand up and you could start moving.

Initial concept of the Main Menu of Ivy's Journey

In this HUD (Heads Up Display) Concept, we decided that we would have an HP Bar - bar that shows the health of the character and an Stamina Bar - a bar that shows the current energy / stamina. Aditionally, we thought on giving some kind of 'special ability' to the player - later defined as a shield and that this ability would charge as the player would strike some hits on the enemies.

Initial concept of the HUD in Ivy's Journey

For the Shop Concept, we decided to give a layout where the character would be visible on the left side of the screen and the items available to buy would be on the right side. On the top right corner we could see our actual currency, although on the final for technical issues we opted for a more simplistic layout where we would have only the items available to buy on the center and the actual currency above them.

Initial concept of the Shop Menu in Ivy's Journey

The Pause Menu Concept helped us understand how should we position the buttons and also the numbers of the respective currency and collectables. In the beginning, we thought on having also an option to 'Save Game' but lately we didn't implement this system.

Initial Concept of the Pause Menu in Ivy's Journey

Concept Art

Main Character - Ivy

The main character of Ivy's Journey, Ivy - an elf that had the goal to defeat spirit elements in order to maintain the equilibrium of this world, had way more detail on her design.

Why?

This character would have way more impact than the environment itself and it was very important that this element of the game was way more detailed than the other elements of the game and to summarize, it should cause an emotional impact with the player.

Choice of the colors:

The choice of the colors for Ivy was blue and brown, this was the main colors that I had in mind to give to her, since they were cold colors they would give a great contrast with some of the warm colors of the environment.

Character Sheet of Ivy - the main character of Ivy's Journey

Fire Treant / Boss - First Elemental Boss

The Fire Boss was the first boss idealized from the two bosses in total that we decided to create. I suggested that the boss was somehow related to trees - and from there, we chose to make a Treant (a being that derives from the trees).

How did we approach this treant to a boss?

For the Fire Treant / Boss, we subdivided his attacks in two types:

Short Range or Melee attacks - where the boss would have a Swing attack to prevent the player from always getting close to her

Long Range or Range Attacks - attacks such as spawning minions (bomb ants) that would deal damage when they explode after a certain cooldown or a hurricane that would go to the position of the player

Concept Art of 'Fire Boss'

The Lightning Boss was the second boss that we idealized from the two bosses we wanted to create in total, this time we didn't went for the usual standard elements (air, fire, water and earth) and we opted for a Lightning Element.

Initially, our vision of the boss was a more humanoid appearance but shortly afterwards it would take a long time to develop such a model and we switched to a slime (creature being that looks like gelatin) with a more grotesque appearance.

The Lighting 'slimeish' boss was very agile and for such, we subdivided him with a lot of animations:

Movement animations - Idle - animation that the boss does while he's not moving, Walk - a big jump that he executes to the player's position

Mode animations - Rage - the boss would gradually getting bigger in size and spawning more slimes in this mode

Attack animations -

Concept Art of 'Lightning Boss'

From this part on, they are concepts of some of the assets I developed throughout my whole process of creating and idealizing the environment, they were pretty important in getting the visuals of the assets as well as a reference to make the modelling process easier.

I used Autodesk Maya to model all the assets seen throughout the game.

Concept Art of 'Ivy's Tent'

Concept Art of 'Main Camp Tent' (Front View)

Concept Art of 'Main Camp Tent' (Side View)

Concept Art of 'Rocks'

Concept Art of 'Trees'

Concept Art of 'Camp Assets'

Concept Art of 'Ivy's Sword'

This was the first elemental weapon that was dropped by the Fire Treant / Boss, my first idea was to create a normal sword involved with fire but in the middle of the process of the 3D Model, I changed to be a greatsword and in the final, we had our first different weapon - a Fire Greatsword.

Concept Art of 'Fire Greatsword'

The second elemental weapon was of course, dropped by the Lightning Boss and it should also contain lightning in its core. To change the design a bit and also the type of the weapon, I decided that the weapon should be an axe - Lightning Axe and of course the animations that I would provide afterwards would be heavier. This axe would have some similarities with Thor's Axe but its appearance should be closer to a Viking Axe.

Concept Art of 'Lightning Axe'

3D Models

If you want to check the 3D Model more up close, you can give it a try on the 3D Player down below from Sketchfab and see the details more in depth.

If you wish to see it on Sketchfab, you can visit this link:

Level Design

The Level Design should be at the same level at the Concept Art or as the 3D Models appearance, so I put a lot of effort into these points of interests - that are called Main Camps (main points of interest) and Secondary Camps (optional points of interest), giving them detail but not as detailed as of course, our character that would be the center of the game.

Although, at the middle of the process a problem came up to the surface...

How could the player in a world so vast as this have a visual cue of where to go or where to explore to?

I had at least 3 days to find a solution to the this problem and the solution came up as watching a video of Level Design from GDC related to Level Design of Witcher 3.

What was the solution to have a visual cue to such a vast world?

From the player's perspective and the video content suggested that Witcher 3 had used a landmark to guide the player through a city, but as the player would have the landmark as reference, he knew exactly which way he should explore or go through.

That's exactly what I did in Ivy's Journey! I created a landmark - a Monolith that would be exactly where were the Main Camps (locations to progress in the game) to let the player know where were these Camps and give him the opportunity to choose which one he pretend to go explore first. This solution was highly appreciated and it was so helpful to enrich this world and make it easier to understand the main paths.

User Interface

The UI (User Interface) of Ivy's Journey was thought with two visual aspects - simple and minimalist. We never decided that the UI was a background thing but always an important layer to give feedback to the player of the important stats - such as health, stamina and of course, the Ultimate Ability (Q).

The icon of the items (health potion, stamina potion, armor buff and attack buff) were really crucial to make the player understand which items he was buying and what was its function.