"Gridiator, a strategy space-invading game that challenges your tactical intellect in conquering your opponents on the battlefield! Choose between interesting alien worlds and compete against opponents across the server to determine who is the best invader in the galaxy!"
Available on Windows Store :
While working as a game artist, I got to work on a whimsical project of aliens duking it out on planets in Wei Qi (also known as Go in Japanese) style. We wanted the game style to look futuristic (aliens are tecnologically advanced than us humans, is the common census; plus it looks cooler), but still retain a certain cuteness and wackiness.
Main menu of Gridiator
As a team, we sat down and discussed on the alien designs. It is important to have them look as diversed from each other as possible, so when the game board is filled with the little alien pawns, it would still be easy to differentiate them.
Players get to choose from 4 alien generals (the latest version would include an additional alien)
One of our artists were put in charge of coming up with the four original alien design, and then later I was put in charge of illustrating all of their different actions.
For the latest version, we added a new purple alien, that was 100% designed and illustrated by yours truly. I have to admit that I had enjoyed the process so much.
The game is loosely based upon Wei Qi. Malaysian kids used to play this in school on a piece of paper with squares printed. The main point of the game is to fill up the board with the alien pawns until there is no more space. The player with the most amount of free pawns gets the highest score, and wins the game. If a player got to create a circle of his own pawns, the opponent's pawns are captured, and the captured pawns will not contribute to the opponent's final score.
Players battle for supremacy on beautiful planets
Having cute and lively characters was not the only step we took to make the nostalgic game interesting. We figured that it would only make sense for the aliens to wage war for the prize of dominating a beautiful planet. A lot of attention had been paid towards the creation of the planets, and I'm happy that I had received a lot of great input from my team mates when I was creating the maps.
When it came to the user interface design, we unanimously decided on neon blue. Of course, there was concern that it would look clichéd, as many futuristic games uses the same colour scheme. But we went on with it because it just fits with the rest of the colours!
This would be the third game that I was involved with user interface design. With the previous two games as experience, I had an easier time with the design for Gridiator.
Leaderboards for the extremely competitives
I am very happy to be involved in the design. The game itself has gotten a few good reviews as well. It is very rewarding for me as a game artist.
