NOTE: this is a demo that was used alongside a pitch deck to seek production funding.

A love letter to the F-Zero franchise with the approachability of a kart racer, this high speed anti-gravity racing game demo targets an audience of all ages. It is set in a futuristic cyberpunk world and features a diverse selection of characters and cars for the player to choose from. There are two different city levels: one is seaside-themed, and the other is Las Vegas-themed.

The game’s funding pitch was considered by several well known companies such as Sega, Bandai Namco, Platinum Games and Nintendo. It was also highly considered by Square Enix Collective (failing a final round of deliberation there by a single vote, I’m told!) but eventually funding efforts were retired in mid-2024.

I filled a leading role as a 3D artist on the blue seafront-themed city (depicted first, below) and a supporting role on the Las Vegas-themed city (shown after). I also did some level design and limited 2D art for textures - I will explain more about my work below! For reference, this demo was made by a tight-knit team with 4 members in producer/marketing roles, and 9 developers as follows:

Two 3D Artists (including me!)

One Character/Concept (2D) Artist

One Level Designer

Two Programmers

3 Musicians/Audio Engineers

I worked as the lead 3D Artist and Level Designer for this city. I used Maya to create custom models, and also to alter purchased assets to make them better fit our needs and optimized. I brought all of these models into Unreal Engine and created materials for them, placed them in a scene to build a city on a grid-style layout, and created a lighting setup depicting sunset. I also used Unreal Engine’s landscape tool to sculpt and paint terrain surrounding the city.

The game is incredibly fast paced; the player races through the track in excess of 1,000 mph. One design challenge I faced was making each of the city’s various districts remain distinctly visible to the player at high speeds.

LANDMARKS

There are several custom buildings that I personally hand modeled in Maya to serve as visual points of interest in the game. These help to distinguish between the different districts of the city and also create a sense of scale for the player as they race through the game world.

DESIGN CHALLENGES

Maintaining distinct and immediate visibility of all the different neon elements in this game was the biggest challenge I faced. Every single item had to be hand placed in the level to avoid any overlapping holographic/transparent objects. Early user testing sessions strongly reflected the importance of this, especially for key items like item boxes.

The game’s item boxes are transparent and needed to be strategically placed around the environment so that the player approached them while they were against a solid backdrop. Since the player cannot pan their view up or down (they can only “look” side-by-side by turning their vehicle) I placed many of the item boxes on downward slopes so they would be shown against the opaque track floor as the player approached. Not only did this create a better experience for the player, it also added more decoration to some areas of the demo that had been lacking in visual interest before.