Roterra is an isometric puzzle adventure that will turn your world upside while challenging your mind with satisfying problem-solving. To regain her throne, Princess Angelica, the rightful ruler of Roterra, must travel through beautifully detailed forests, caves, and castles where the land itself has been manipulated against her. By rotating, sliding, elevating, and spinning the world around her, the Princess must solve the labyrinths and overcome the obstacles set in her path by the evil usurper. The ever-changing, gravity-defying environment of Roterra allows the princess to literally turn the world upside down on her quest to reclaim her Queenship. The game is now available for IOS devices. Check it out here!
Prop Concepts
I was tasked with different ways that a character could explore a flat surface that was transformative. Since certain tiles could be rotated it offered up interesting possibilities as to how a player navigated simple ideas like paths and turns. Depending on player actions certain pathways would start closed and become open, start single pathed and turn multi-directional, or start on one level of elevation and turn into a bridge connecting two higher planes. I also wanted to explore ways of visually indicating to a player what tiles were of more significance than others. In a world of increasing complexity we knew that it wouldn't be long before the player was overwhelmed with choices and that we could communicate objectives through the environment itself. We could then decorate our gameplay pieces with narratively consistent environment artwork.
Visual Development
Some of the earliest visual development sketches we made to pitch the game. Major influences were M. C. Escher and perspective illusions. We combined that with medieval fantasy, to include conventional tropes like forests, caves and castles to our unconventional world. Many of these initial sketches explored larger interactions with the environment itself rather than pathing. But they did get the team excited about the game's possibilities. Considering that we were developing this game for a variety of IOS devices we leaned into lower poly counts and a simpler, graphic art direction.
Narrative Renders
Most of the game was communicated to the player through retouched narrative paintings using in game-assets. That way the player could focus purely on the puzzles while playing, while still understand character motivations and story moments after the puzzles had been completed.
Narrative Storyboard Sketches
Cinematic Storyboard
The introductory cinematic of the game needed to both establish story and hint at the fundamental gameplay mechanic. Animation by Rob Coakley.
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UI Look Development
