Yellow Eyes

Yellow Eyes was the end of year project I realised as a first year student. The given theme was "Tribute", and we had to conceptualise a game taking inspiration from the body of work of one of three artists, between John Carpenter, Kurt Cobain, and the Wachowski sisters. Being a fan of his movies, I chose John Capenter, and got to work.

I found the idea of what I wanted the game to be very fast. A detective in the 1930s, bound to a mysterious entity and trying to escape monsters, all in a 2D sidescroller game. The main inspiration was Gunpoint (2013), which also inspired me a lot for the art direction.

First Concepts

Those are the very first illustrations I made for this project. I already had a base idea to work with, as you can see, with the detective already accompanied with his Fragment. It was originally evil, or at least menacing in its nature, given it was also part of the King in Yellow, the main antagonist of the game. Obviously, I had taken inspiration from Robert W. Chambers' books, even making it a central part of this work. The Detective, who would stay unnamed though the game, had picked up the book, and upon reading it, instead of drowning in madness, found himself bound to a fragment of The King, amnesiac and confused. As you can also see, I wanted to give them a lantern as their primary source of light, which was later changed to a zippo lighter.

The Characters

The Detective

This is our main character! Unnamed throughout the game, he has been bound to a Fragment of the King In Yellow after reading a fateful book. He can attack with a Colt pistol, starting each level with 12 bullets. He can also use his Percieve ability, granted by his link to the Fragment, which allows him to see monsters the King sends his way. His goal is to find a way for the Fragment to be unbound, but not to let the King have it, lest the world be plunged in darkness.

As you can see here, the artistic direction and general design went though a lot of stages! I started with sketching my ideas, trying to get a feel of the protagonist. For a while, I considered a cuter artsyle, even making a turn of it (img 3), but scrapped it for a semi-realistic style. The very first idea was a young man seeing ghosts through special lenses, similarly to the main character in They Live. It was scrapped pretty quickly for the detective, of course. Old, young, fliratious or even with strange sleep powers, I tried to detach myself from one particular archetype of the noir detective, but I won't deny the appeal the broody monologues and rain-soaked trench coats have for me.

I wanted to dialogues to be in more of a visual novel way, so I made talk sprites! Those are just sketches of course.

Those are what I want the actual in-game sprites to look like. Here are a run and a damage sheet. I'd envisaged for the game to be 3D, but the pixel art was more appealing to me.

The Fragment

This is our secondary character the Fragment of the King. It fights alongside the Detective by manifesting sword through its power.

The first instances of thumbnailing were complicated. I didn't have many ideas. It's only after looking at references and inspirations that I managed to nail down a design I appreciated. Drawings non-humans wasn't a skill I had developped a lot prior to this project, so it was challenging ti find something nice to do.

I imagined the Detective and the Fragment to have lots of conversations, given they are alone most of the game, so I gave it talk sprites too.

Those are the floating sprites when it's idle or moving alongside the Detective, and some attack sprites.

The King in Yellow

This is our main antagonist! a very menacing fellow indeed. He's also the one on the main illustration I made for the game.

Cobra and Stevie

Those two characters are the only no hostile NPCs encountered through the game. Cobra is met in the first level, in the City. He helps the Detective get through the first monsters, and gives him his source of light, the zippo. Stevie is met in chapter 4. She's a radio operator first met through phone calls scattered in the level. She's met physically in the last section of the level, the lighthouse.

Walkthrough

Level 1: the City

In this first level, the Detective, freshly bound to the Fragment, discovers the existence of monsters, and must now escape New York. This level is mainly isnpired by John Carpenter's, you guessed it, Escape from New York, as well as his film They Live. As soon as the player exits the office building, they're met by more monsters, and rapidly out of ammunition. That is when Cobra arrives, taking the Detective aside and offering him both the zippo lighter he will use througout the adventure and more ammunition, with instructions to be careful. The player is then left to trekk through the city and get out of the level, escaping the City and its monsters.

Level 2: the Suburbs

Level 3: the Caves

Level 4: the Frontier

Level 5: the Dark World

Other Realisations

The monsters encountered in chapters 2 and 3.

Main visual for the game

Cover art

A couple user interface mock-ups I made.