Patchwork Beast

Patchwork Beast is a student game project created for the theme “awe and wonder” as part of the University of Texas at Austin’s game development capstone. Awe and wonder are interesting emotions to design for, as they contain a great sense of vastness and some element of fear and uncertainty. Our team was particularly inspired by the colossal, majestic beasts from media like Shadow of the Colossus and Princess Mononoke. We felt these characters were a perfect marriage of our theme, as they can evoke feelings of reverence and terror simultaneously.

We wanted to translate this experience into a 2D format, in which a large, mysterious beast is both the player’s adversary and environment. The game would focus on a symbiotic relationship between the player character and the beast they must save.

A seemingly sentient beast made of haphazardly welded parts has awakened and is rotting the forest from the inside out with metallic corrosion. As a forest spirit, the player must explore the beast’s inner, mechanical workings and heal it before the forest is consumed, discovering more about the nature of the beast along the way.

To create a sense of scale, our art style uses a detailed, painterly look for the environment, and a simpler, cel-shaded style for the player character and interactable objects. This helps important game elements pop from the background and keeps the player from feeling lost. The color palette primarily uses muted greens and warm, earthy tones to evoke a fantasy forest setting. The UI is designed to be minimal and immersive, using diegetic elements when possible to keep the player grounded in the game world.

Patchwork Beast is a 2D puzzle platformer. Players traverse a series of rooms inside the beast, each with a unique puzzle to solve. The primary mechanic involves finding and activating pressure plates to unlock doors and clear paths. These puzzles are designed to be challenging but intuitive, encouraging exploration and careful observation. Some rooms introduce environmental hazards or special objects that add new layers to the puzzles. The game is designed to be completed in a single sitting, with a clear narrative arc that unfolds as the player progresses.

As a 10-week student project, our team of eight was split into two main groups: art and programming. The art team was responsible for character design, environment art, UI/UX, and animation. The programming team handled game mechanics, player controls, and puzzle implementation. We used an agile development process with weekly sprints to stay on track. This allowed us to iterate quickly and incorporate feedback from playtesting sessions. One of the biggest challenges was creating a sense of scale and depth in a 2D environment. We used parallax scrolling and careful layering of assets to create the illusion of a massive, cavernous interior.