Hello, here’s another update on the state of Curse of Janksbury! I’m Mary Benetti, the lead artist for the game with a  focus on level design and animation. Lately, the team has been tweaking gameplay and level design to make the player experience shine. We’ve reconsidered scope and priorities of gameplay, and have distilled the game into two main, unique levels. The first level of the game is about introducing the player to the town and overall lore. Before the “jankness” reigns terror over the town, the player gets to leisurely walk down a street designated for the Jankbury Festival. Within this festival there are an abundance of vendors, games, and music for the player (and townspeople) to enjoy. It’s lighthearted, it’s fun, and maybe a bit unsettling. 

My role recently has been importing the artists assets into Unity, placing them within the level, and adjusting the layout and color of the models to be visually cohesive and stimulating. Doing level design early helps me assess how the layout functions with the movement of the player and the duration that we expect them to be in the level. After playtesting, I go in and move around assets or adjust them in the 3D modeling program for re-import and re-testing.  This process can be pretty time consuming. 

Right now, this first level acts as an intro to the longer, main gameplay events happening in the second one. I focused on creating a contrast between muted earth tones of buildings and landscape, with poppy fun colors of the festival tents and props.

Each festival goer is wearing a festival mask to add a tinge of mystique and silliness to the level. A couple of the creatures depicted within the masks are foreshadowing of the enemies to appear in the second level. My task was to model the masks and properly attatch them to each person and their animations.

The animations for the festival goers are subtle but charming.