Cure

Project description

A (super) short narative experience I made in my first year studying game art!

In Cure you experience life through the eyes of Theodore, An underapreciated scientist working in a big pharmaceutical company. Your little sister is severly ill and you made it your life's mission to save her but the last ingredient you need is sparse and also the key ingredient in the company's most sold medicine.

What will you do? The choice is yours.

Skip to the parts you want to see!

How I made it!

Character Design

Because Cure is a really short narative experience I really wanted to create a fitting pixel art style and characters the player would actually care for and sympathise with.

Progress

I knew I needed portraits and in game sprites for my characters, so my first step in this process was figuring out which canvas size I wanted to use for my portraits and which size I wanted to use for my sprites, these sizes needed to work together.

Since this was my first real experience with making pixel art assets, I started by looking at other pixel art games (like Celeste) and experimenting with the different sizes.

At the same time I started making concept sketches Theo.

First sketches

Starting in pixel art

After figuring out what Theo looked like and what style and size I wanted to use for my pixel portraits I could start trying stuff out.

In the picture on the right you can see a summary of my progress and the different emotions I made for Theo!

Tile sets and props

During development I started out with assets I bought from Itch.io. Getting the game working was my first priority, since I also coded everything myself in Unity (with some help here and there from friends and tutorials).

But after a while I decided that I wanted to go all in for this project! Which meant making my own props and a tile set from scratch!

That's also why i'm so incredibly proud of this project! I know there's still lots to improve (and I have already improved a lot after this project). But knowing I not only coded this game but also made all the art, story and dialogue while knowing near to nothing about most elements really deserves to be acknowledged!

Floors and walls

Props

UI

Lastly the UI of Cure.

Because of limited time I kept it simple, some experiments for the dialogue box, the item list and what fonts I wanted to use. Here you can see a little of the progress I made!

Meet the characters!

Theodore

the main character

Backstory

Theo is a young scientist that cares deeply for his sister, he is the sole provider of their household and had to enter the workfield at a very young age because of that. He is a very bright and talented scientist but because of his age isn't well respected by his peers and lacks the confidence needed to get what he wants.

Annie

the little sister

Backstory

Annie is Theo's little sister and biggest supporter. She used to be a healthy child but her health took a turn for the worse not too long ago. Despite everything she is still very bubbly and silly and loves to go to work with Theo whenever she's allowed too.

Arthur

the Colleague

Backstory

I started with the main character Theo.

Theo is a young scientist that cares deeply for his sister, he is the sole provider of their household and had to enter the workfield at a very young age because of that. He is a very bright and talented scientist but because of his age isn't well respected by his peers and lacks the confidence needed to get what he wants.