Aesthetic Design - Nicky-Nice-Games/UnityProject GitHub Wiki
Aesthetic Design
Theming
Our game is a whimsical, RIT-themed racing experience focused on the IGM department. Drawing visual inspiration from Mario Kart 64, the game leans into a nostalgic, low-poly aesthetic with exaggerated, cartoonish characters environments. Each racer represents a quirky archetype of an IGM student- nerdy tech wizards, tired artists, wired academic weapons– brought to life with bold colors and playful tracks. Tracks are set across imaginative renditions of RIT landmarks like the Global Village, the SHED, the Quarter Mile, and even a freshman dorm, all stylized in a low poly 3D look. The tone is light-hearted and chaotic, celebrating the creativity, diversity, and caffeine-fueled chaos surrounding IGM student life.
Look and Feel
The game captures a playful, nostalgic atmosphere through a low-poly visual style. Environments and characters are rendered in chunky, low-poly 3D models reminiscent of earlier Mario Kart titles with vibrant textures and angular proportions.The color palette is bold and saturated, with strong contrasts to emphasize gameplay elements and track hazards. The UI is clean and similarly inspired by retro racing games; and draws the player to the center, where their racer is located.
The primary (or “condensed”) color palette consists mostly of warm colors to match RIT’s overall branding and to contrast with many other kart racing games that rely on blue or cyan. Yellow and green are used as secondary or accent colors to be used sparingly. The full color palette is vibrant and saturated with most colors having a skewed hue (e.g. the base “green” leans a bit toward cyan, “blue” leans toward purple). Brightness variations of the full color palette for highlights and shading are allowed as long as the hue is kept consistent with the base color; this is up to the artist’s discretion.
The UI is clean and similarly inspired by retro racing games and draws the eye toward the center (where the racer is located). Most UI elements and menus should use the condensed palette with red and orange being the main colors. UI should also use the greyscale palette as opposed to the neutral palette, which is reserved for the characters.
Narrative
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Characters
We chose our cast of characters with a few factors in mind: scalability, originality, and level of approval they’d need. As far as scalability goes, we are aiming to give all characters a generic Mii-like body, with their heads being individualized to the given character. This makes it easy to pump out a full cast of characters, with a focus on the heads pulling the weight of a silhouette since the back of a character’s head is most of what the player will see. Originality was very important as well, and this ties into needing approval, as planning for mascots was our immediate thought– but these were not safe bets like general student characters. Plus, there is a freedom and originality in representing different parts of the student body that mascots don’t afford.
- Testing Default Racer
12 characters
- Dining Worker
- Skater
- Orientation Leader
- Hockey Player
- Jamster (RGDC Mascot)
- Grad Super Senior
- Climber
- Shorts Dude
- Weez
- Sten
- Nick
- Custom Webcam
Audio
Inspirations
As most kart games do, a lot of the inspiration comes from the Mario Kart series, as well as the general low poly vibe (early 3D, N64, PS2, etc.). With this, the sound is meant to sound a little crunchy, not quite at that crisp quality we have nowadays.
Theming
As previously mentioned, there’s a general idea for things to be a little crunchy, with a bit of a lo-fi filter. The music will be a bit more on the synth/techy vibe, seeing as we are a tech school, but will still have some natural sounds to ground things a bit. It will generally follow the environment in which it is being played, at least in terms of general vibe and drive.
References
Mario Kart 64 - Sound collection https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp_DT6KaWkXJxpV4EPvYpjTnro--kKjJq
Content List (Current, will grow/shrink as ideas are narrowed)
Sound Effects - 15
- Menu Clicks - 3
- Low
- Medium
- High
- Kart - 12
- Bumping into obstacles
- Accelerating
- Braking
- Honk
- Item Pickup
- Item Use
- Spin-Out
- KO
- Ground Sounds - 4
- Dirt
- Road
- Crunchy
- Rocky
Music Tracks - 7
- Main Menu Theme
- Character/Track Select Menu
- Map Theme (4 maps min) - 4
- Map 1
- Map 2
- Map 3
- Map 4
- Race results
Stingers - 6
- Selections (menu selects) - 4
- Play from menu
- Confirm Character Select
- Confirm Mode Select
- Confirm Map Select
- Race Start Countdown
- Lap made
Voice Lines - 24
- For each character (6 characters min) - 4
- Item used
- Lap made
- Racer passed
- Get hit
Content Assets
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