These images show a sequence of demo levels that I designed and built in late 2022. In addition to the blockout, I ended up modeling and texturing the levels, and also did lighting, particles, and post-process effects.
I modeled all of the 3D assets in these scenes using Blender, and created tiling textures for them with Quixel Mixer. Using Quixel Mixer, I was able to apply various effects to the textures to create a more saturated, stylized look to help the backgrounds fit with the character sprites and achieve a look inspired by classic 2D/3D hybrid games of the Playstation era, along with more recent "HD-2D" games like Octopath Traveler or the Live a Live remake.
We intended the combat demo to be a very short, linear experience that showcased the game’s art, musical score, dialog, and combat systems, clocking in at about 5-10 minutes of play time. The player would start with a short dialog cutscene to provide context, then run through the map, find a few treasure chests, and fight a couple of combat encounters before ending up outside on the battlements overlooking the burning city, which provided a dramatic backup for a cutscene and boss battle.
Witch was a massive team effort, including studio head/development lead Ben Cross, composer Thomas J Peters, programmer Lilith Walther, and many other brilliant folks across all disciplines. The character sprite shown in these images was created by JC Canda based on character designs by Kat Yjares and additional character sprite art by Phillip Mendelson. Lilith Walther, our programmer, set up the level loading, camera, inventory, and dialogue systems.
