Mark The Park
Designed a timeboxed pixel-art game about territory control with tradeoffs in the perspective of a dog named Marc
Created the concept and design for “Mark The Park” during a 9-day sprint around the theme “Conquer.” Defined core mechanics (marking areas under a limited bladder capacity), visual direction (3/4 top-down pixel art), and produced assets plus UI screens. The design was then implemented into a playable game by two computer science students.v
Role
Game Concept & Visual Designer
Context
Student project (iGame)
Timeline
9 Days in 2023
Team
Designer: Me, Dario Foti
Developer: Marin Hirschi, Marco Burkhardt
Outcome
Playable single-player game prototype
Idea & Concept
Mark The Park is a single-player game where you control a dog named Marc with your mouse movement. The goal is to mark as many areas in the park as possible, but Marc's bladder capacity is limited! To cover all areas, he needs to drink regularly, but a full bladder slows him down. Strategize wisely to mark the park efficiently and complete the challenge as quickly as possible.
Design choices & process
For our game, we decided to use a pixel art style from a 3/4 top-down view. This allows the player to see their path as clearly as possible. We decided to use a 64x64 grid for our pixel art assets in order to reduce the level of detail and keep the game free of unnecessary textures.
With these guidelines in mind, we started drawing the assets, which turned out to be a challenge at first, since pixel art was completely new territory for us.
Character design
For our character Marc the dog we have chosen a sweet shiba. Then we defined the number of assets: The dog can walk in four directions, so we need him from the side, front, and back. In addition, we also need the dog “peeing”. We quickly realized that we had to draw a bunch of assets to create a cool walking animation afterward.
Tilemap design
We had to create a tile map so that we could later design and test our level in many different variations. With these tiles, we could later design the map as we wished. The tile map consists of the areas to be marked, which turn into a marked area in 3 steps, a non-markable area, a hedge that acts as an obstacle, and a drinking area. For the hedge and the drinking area in particular, we had to draw many different cases so that this hedge could be drawn as desired.
Final steps & appearance
To create the most playable map possible for our first level, we first had to draw different level designs with our tilemap and test them with the game mechanics to make sure they were as playable as possible. Furthermore, all assets were integrated into our game and we finally had to design a start and end screen, as well as some GUI elements to achieve the final look of the game.
