Reliquary is a single player side-scroller RPG adventure game set in a world where the last vestiges of magic have been imbued into various items called "relics." You play as a group of relic hunters who are tracking down the latest bounty that has the entire city in an uproar.
What could it be?
My Role
Co-Developer, Sprite Artist, Designer, Narrative Designer
Tools
Procreate, Unity
Timeline
Aug 2023 - Dec 2023
What I did:
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Managed artistic direction
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Collaborated with my co-developer, Seunghee Han, and together we:
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Designed game mechanics
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Created an audio style guide to pitch with
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Developed the world and narrative
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Asset creation
Ruth
Ruth was the first fully fleshed out character. She acts as the strong leader of the group. There isn't much reason for her to be a softball player in a magical world. We just wanted her to be one. Her magical artifact is her baseball bat.
She was the first and only one to get a walk cycle animation as well.
Originally we wanted our characters to all have special abilities or at least one special passive granted by their artifact. Ruth's passive would be that she deflects a certain amount of damage when she acts as the vanguard. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we weren't able to implement these passives.
Sculptor
The sculptor is the shy and anxious second character to contrast Ruth. We wanted our characters to use mundane items as their weapons. The sculptor uses a mallet and chisel.
Because he essentially has two artifacts we thought it would be cool if he could do two things at once in a way.
One working idea we had for his passive would be he could link the hp of two enemies together. When one took damage, the linked enemy took a percentage of damage as well. This would have been the only way to deal damage to multiple targets at once.
Bruce
Bruce is the final and third playable character players are introduced to. He is a sailor and the tough guy but loveable old guy of the group. When the group got split up, he had to ditch his trusty anchor relic in order to escape the guards. Unfortunately that meant it fell into the hands of David, the leader of the rival relic hunters.
Bruce has to make do with an improvised weapon, a teapot. We thought it would be funny if a massive and hulking figure like Bruce wielded something dinky and fragile as a teapot as a type of brass knuckle weapon.
His passive, if given the chance, would have been something like additional healing.
and David
David is the leader of the rival hunter group and is also chasing down the magical trail. She stole Bruce's beloved anchor in the city. She is the final boss of the game and originally, we wanted her to have two phases to her fight. In the first phase she would wield her original shovel relic and then in the final phase, she would dual wield. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we never quite got there.
Harley
Harley is the last wizard in the world, AKA the last source of organic magic. In a world where magic has to be harnessed from objects, it is quite the miracle if someone is able to generate it from within themselves. Harley is the artifact the hunters have been looking for. Harley's magic can change the world.
We wanted Harley to appear very gender neutral and innocent, to reflect how full of potential they really are. In the rendering, they are the only character who's blue light illuminates from themselves.
Guard
Generic fantasy guard NPC... nuff said
The city serves as the introduction and tutorial area of the game. In the story, the hunters' trail leads them into the city, but before they can make much, the group of three gets caught and end up split.
I took inspiration from the cartoon show Chowder which takes inspiration from Middle Eastern aesthetics.
So... the first background was too short and we didn't have enough art to work with to allow the player to walk across the screen as we would have liked. Noted... So I made the second background super long.
Originally we planned to have a third act take place in the deep forest, so this would have been the transition between the first and last act. However, due to time constraints, act 2 and 3 got compressed and now share the same background.
At this point the project had gone on for a while and the look and style have become more cemented, as a result the rendering is slightly different from the city background.
Intro Cutscene
Bruce is the final and third playable character players are introduced to. He is a sailor and the tough guy but loveable old guy of the group. When the group got split up, he had to ditch his trusty anchor relic in order to escape the guards. Unfortunately that meant it fell into the hands of David, the leader of the rival relic hunters.
Bruce has to make do with an improvised weapon, a teapot. We thought it would be funny if a massive and hulking figure like Bruce wielded something dinky and fragile as a teapot as a type of brass knuckle weapon.
His passive, if given the chance, would have been something like additional healing.
Outro Cutscene
David is the leader of the rival hunter group and is also chasing down the magical trail. She stole Bruce's beloved anchor in the city. She is the final boss of the game and originally, we wanted her to have two phases to her fight. In the first phase she would wield her original shovel relic and then in the final phase, she would dual wield. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we never quite got there.
