Enriching the visual environments of interactive story-driven games

Project partners: Revolution Software and the University of York

Revolution has created eight successful adventure games which have won multiple awards and collectively sold over 10 million copies. The company has a large, diverse and highly passionate audience who enjoy their stories set within detailed and hand-drawn environments. This project investigates how new techniques and processes can create beautiful backgrounds cost effectively.

Unlike a linear medium such as a cartoon, an adventure game invites the player to investigate and search for clues in intricate environments. As the stories become increasingly ambitious, so does the requirement for visually appealing and detailed backgrounds to support and enhance them.

Backgrounds for adventure games have traditionally required huge volumes of art to be created in a very labour-intensive process. The ambition of these games has been heavily limited by the production cost of 2D/3D art assets.  Therefore, this project will investigate ways in which the potential for expanded environments in adventure games can be unlocked.

Categories: Games