Daidala | 2D graphics for a tower defence game

After hearing the game pitch of protecting the mythical Minotaur from the "heroes" attempting to slay it, I was excited to join the project as lead artist. In a team of seven students and with a deadline in eight weeks we built Daidala from scratch to be displayed at the Gotland Game Conference 2021 - with great success: Daidala won the Best in Storytelling -award and was ranked #2 overall.

My responsibilities were guiding the art team toward an aesthetic whole, designing two of the characters (Minotaur and Hoplite), art for the menus and HUD, frame-by-frame animations (for traps and GUI), and most of the environment assets.

Created in 2021 using Unity and Krita.

Daidala can be played in browser at https://marpal.itch.io/daidala

Recorded gameplay.

Screenshot [1/3]. The desired atmosphere was a serene garden, which the "heroes" are invading.

Screenshot [2/3]. All art assets here are made by me except for the cursor and maze walls. Through play testing we discovered that players needed clear feedback on trap selections and valid/invalid placements, so I created tile highlight effects.

Screenshot [3/3]. The main menu.

Concept art [1/3]. At first we looked for a suitable art direction through various mock-ups. While we liked the ones inspired by Greek vases, we settled on a flowery garden to support the narrative of Minotaur as a peaceful creature.

Concept art [2/3]. Cypresses and olive trees were natural choices for the setting of the game - here I explored different styles of drawing them. I also created statues for each level to visualize the story being narrated.

Concept art [3/3]. I explored a variety of tile designs to have options and to find what best communicates the function of the tile to the player.