Portfolio
Nova diner is a 2D pixel art experience I created for a school assignment. In the experience, the player plays as a young boy who is visiting Nova Diner, a diner in the desert; the place is abandoned but welcoming and has a song playing from the jukebox. The player can switch songs, but upon doing this the entire interior of the diner changes, as if the main character is sent to a dystopian future.
Solo Project
role: all
Project Runtime
1 month
Software Used
firealpaca, pixel studio, unity
The project is inspired by a single picture; in class, we were shown a series of images and we had to pick one. I picked a picture of a diner and continued working with this.
The dystopian switch in the experience is inspired by my love for post-apocalyptic themes in media. I've chosen the desert as environment for the diner, because it gives off a desolate and isolated feeling.
The images on the right show the production phase of this project. Every asset shown is made by me, and I had to implement everything in Unity myself to make it a fully-functioning experience.
The diner has an interior and an exterior, to give the player some environmental context. Originally, the interior would feature a kitchen as a secret area; due to lack of time I had to leave this out.
For our assignment, we had to implement a switch in the environment which, on activation, would change the environment. In my case, the jukebox serves as the switch, and upon activation some assets in the diner are changed, as well as the lighting of the scene.
In addition to the atmospheric lighting, I've also added post processing to the scene to give it a more retro look and feel.
This project has taught me a lot about how to create a 2D pixel art game; prior to this, I had not made anything like this before. Now I know which settings to use in Unity to put a 2D pixel art game together, and I know how to create pixel art and how to implement this in my scene.
Because of this project, I also have more knowledge about how to use lighting and post processing to my advantage, and to set the mood for my scene.
