Bloompunk

Bloompunk is an immersive, rogue-like, first-person shooter set in a vibrant world of nature. Players must grow and evolve their living arsenal of abilities to fight back against an invasive technological corruption before it consumes the forest. 

My Contributions

Bloompunk was developed between June 2022 and May 2023 with a full team of 32 for the USC Games Advanced Games Project (AGP) class. As the Art Director, some of my responsibilities include:
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  • Authored art bible and illustrated paintovers/concepts to ensure stylistic standards

  • Provided weekly feedback for artists to ensure all assets fit the creative vision

  • Implemented 3D art assets and environment set dressing 

  • Monitored art production schedule to meet assigned deadlines 

  • Worked closely with other departments to create pipelines and solve interdepartmental dependencies

The Gun

Key Art by Tian Yang.

As the Art Director, my number one priority was to create an art style using the fusion of nature and technology. We wanted the rainforest world to feel full of life but also have a sense of eeriness. We wanted visual storytelling to be prevalent around the environment, and my job was to make sure all the characters and environment assets made sense narratively and complemented the gameplay.

The Environment

Concept Work by Megan Mo.

The gun is the main weapon that the player uses, and helped set the tone for the rest of the art concepts in the game. Since this is a prime example of the good technology in the game, we wanted to emphasize the symbiotic relationship between technology and nature working together in harmony. This helped set the standard that technology should be the supporting element of the plants.

Early Concept Explorations - We loved the mood of the dim atmosphere and the sense of scale, these features would end up making it to the final version. Concept work by Rosemary Wu.

Technology and Plant Concepts - We wanted the technology in our environment to feel as if nature has absorbed these foreign objects into their body. As for the plants corrupted by these technology, we were inspired by the people infected by shimmer in Arcane. We wanted them to feel alien-like and a bit unsettling to look at.

Concept work by Allena Zhu and Rachel Perry.

Concept work by Allena Zhu.

One of the biggest challenges I faced halfway through development was guiding the player through the environment. Since everything in our game world, from non-interactable props to giant flower platforms, were all super vibrant, players had a hard time navigating through the dense forest. One of our game design goals was to create points of interest around the map for players to get a good FOV of the enemies and movement options. To solve this problem, we decided to lower the vibrancy of the environment as a whole, and keep the saturation and brightness for important elements such as player abilities, destructible props, and important storytelling cues. To guide the players, we also added sun rays that illuminated the points of interest around the map.

In the early paintover on the left, we were pushing and pulling the different degrees of vibrancy until we landed on something that was both aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate.

Final Paintover to get a sense of lighting and set dressing. Concept work done by me.

Final In-Game Screenshots!

The Hero

Herb is the scientist behind the creation of the technology, and the one who sets out to restore society, which was destroyed by his own creation. The heroic look didn’t quite fit his character, so we decided for a “more scrappy, less fighter” type of look.

Concept Work by Allena Zhu

Memories

An essential part of our storytelling element, told through comic-like panels that appear after every stage. The player unlocks Herb’s past memories as they progress through their journey for redemption.