I Dream of Ghosts: An Urban Fantasy Visual Novel
"I Dream of Ghosts" is a dark, urban fantasy visual novel. The game is being developed with the Construct 2 HTML5 engine. It has gone through a number of changes in concept and scope and is still evolving. Originally, It was going to be a short horror game with a top-down view. The current incarnation will be single screen environments, more in line with modern lite-adventure/hidden-object games and visual novels like Cinders and Soul Gambler.
Concepts to Assets
I had such a strong visual concept for the environments of the game in my mind that I jumped from environment concept to actual asset creation almost immediately.
UPDATE: Most of this stuff is no longer relevant and will not be used.
Initial concept sketch.
Finished asset.
Finished asset.
Finished asset.
Finished asset.
Assets in environment with player sprite to check colour and scale.
UPDATE: Nothing in these two videos will be used in the visual novel.
Early alpha testing interaction and movement.
New walk cycle for the player sprite in "I Dream of Ghosts". The original (seen in the video above this one) was created in After Effects with 2d images but the result was unsatisfactory.
Ghosts
The original concept for the game was to have an emphasis on the player character and his interaction with the environments. The ghosts were almost an afterthought. It took me a few months but I realized that a game called "I Dream of Ghosts" should be about ghosts! I then began designing my phantasms to have distinct personalities and motivations. I didn't want to follow any cliche visual representations of the spirits so I started to push them further and further in an to attempt to create ghosts with an original look and feel.
Thorn - This is one of the first designs. She does follow the pale, white "ghost" look. However I still like her design.
Plasm - This ghost again follows the old-school visual formula for a ghost. I still like him but I'm not sure I will use this one.
Marrow - This could still be seen as falling into the mould of the classic ghost. I will be using this one for sure but it's not pushed quite as far as I'd like.
The Rook - Now this is more like it! I feel I hit on something new and fresh for a disembodied spirit with this guy. As soon as I drew him I knew what his personality was. No ghost in the dream world is reliable or trustworthy but The Rook is a liar and a deceiver.
"I Dream of Ghosts" is still in development. More coming soon!
