Improving Aesthetics I
Iterating and improvising
We took several steps to improve the aesthetics of the game to better suit the style to the game, its desired UX as well as provide an immersive VR environment. After having the functionality running well, we realized that what truly makes the game as fun as we want it to be aren’t the core mechanics but the overall feel and aesthetics. There have been games with really simple mechanics and yet the aesthetics make it extremely enjoyable.
Firstly, we updated the assets to represent the desired setting of a sci-fi mad scientist’s lab. The models were handpicked from the asset store after researching and taking inspiration from a variety of sources, including other games and movies. The colors of white and blue helped build this theme as well. We modified the layout to tastefully place helpful objects that players could magnetize to shoot down enemies too, for example. At this point, the level looked as follows.
However, the problem in this setting was that the background had so much detail that it grabbed attention. All the bright in-focus colors made the overall experience very overwhelming, especially in VR. Contrast was lacking and the boundaries of some assets were even inconsistent because of slightly varying color schemes.
To solve this, we implemented a dark palette universally to non-enemy assets. This makes the central objects, i.e. enemies, get the focus they deserve, while making the overall experience less overwhelming. At this stage, the level looked a lot cleaner — but also, it was too dark to be enjoyable at this point.
However, at this point, we found that adding a few Point Light sources around the scene with different vibrant colors made the game look a lot more polished and the aesthetic appeal improved a lot. More importantly, this vibe felt really good with the low-pitched background track and made the game a lot more immersive in VR. With just one light source, the foreground objects got a nice glow to them while the background objects faded away.
With multiple light sources of different colors, the game finally began to feel a pleasure to play and explore. Moreover, we decided to have low-res textures on the walls instead of stripes and symbols, and only keep more high-res textures on movable/interact-able walls. This helped create contrast as well.
Finally, we used post-processing filters on the camera to turn vision grayscale and darker as the player took damage. This gave an interesting feel to the play and made it feel a positive extension in VR because on-screen UI felt less natural based on an initial survey we conducted.
