The Wardrobe [PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox One, macOS] - Stefano Barilli

Description

The Wardrobe is a visually-rich 2D point and click adventure game inspired by the great ‘90s classics such as ‘Monkey Island‘, ‘Day of the Tentacle‘, ‘Sam & Max: Hit the Road‘ and ‘Tony Tough‘. The game has a strong sense of humour, but isn’t shy about dealing with mature and non-politically correct themes.

More than 40 hand-illustrated and digitally colored locations, enriched by dozens of nerd quotes.
Tons of clever puzzles and inventory objects to collect!
Play as Skinny, a teen-skeleton with an impertinent attitude and a sparkling wit, willing to do anything to save his best friend’s soul from eternal damnation!

Story

It all happened five years ago, during a picnic arranged by Ronald and his best friend Skinny.
Things were going well, until Ronald pulled out two very tiny plums from his basket, one for Skinny and one for him. Not knowing about his deadly allergy to plums, Skinny didn’t think twice about eating it, and immediately went into anaphylactic shock which caused his sudden death. Ronald ran off, terrified. When he woke up, Skinny discovered that he had become a skeleton and had been sentenced to live in Ronald’s bedroom wardrobe forever. Since then, Skinny has watched over Ronald constantly, without his knowledge… but now things are going to change!

To save his best friend’s soul from eternal damnation, Skinny will be forced to reveal himself and make Ronald admit his ‘crime’. Not a simple challenge at all!

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Screenshot

My work: Digital coloring

In The Wardrobe I took care of the coloring of the whole game world, from the environment to the characters. For the project, we chose a cartoon and comic style characterized by bright and vivid colors to reflect the style of the gameplay and dialogues. Following are several screens.

Environment and location

The illustrators sent me the inked black and white plates and, based on the place, the time of day, and the type of light sources that characterized the scene, I created a color palette. From that, I spread the flat colors throughout the location, I inserted the shadows generated by the points of light, added the details of each element (rocks, crystals, liquids for example) and finally established which elements could be characterized by a colored lineart so that stand out even more in the scene.

Inventory’s items

Inventory items were the funniest assets to color for the level of detail I could achieve and because they were very quick to color. As for the environments, the illustrators sent me the objects in black and white and I colored them respecting the colors chosen in the relative location. In the video below you can see my process of coloring a game object.

Characters and frame-by-frame animations

The characters, some of which were famous quotes from the world of cinema, comics or the nerd world in general, had to be characterized by behaviors, or simply strange clothes, with equally bright colors that captured the eye of the player. The characters were animated through After Effects or through traditional frame-by-frame animation.

Categories: Game Dev