Making Sync Wars
Sync Wars is a turn-based tactics video game made by Carnegie Mellon students for the Game Creation Society. It is a coop game where two armies take turns to defeat an eldritch menace, yet each army is in a different dimension. They must work together by coordinating their attack and sending certain enemies to the other dimension for the other army to tackle. This game was inspired by Fire Emblem and Advance Wars.
I was brought on as an environment artist, and I had the interesting task of making not one, but three worlds. One army was to be a high tech, sophisticated society, and the other army was to be an old tech, more crude society. And of course, there was the enemy, an interdimensional cosmic horror.
For the aesthetics, we went to look at sleek, futuristic art from various movies and games. The Covenant ships and weapons from Halo, or Naboo from Star Wars. We created a backstory where they were a society that valued technology, and tamed nature.
On the other hand, we went with a Mad Max look, where there were more angles, and rust. Aside from Mad Max, we also took a look at Tatooine from Star Wars, and looked at deserts in Australia and the Southwest US. This society would have been hit by an apocalypse, and now was a world of warlords scavenging parts from previous technology.
The Eldritch monsters were harder to visualize. We went with Lovecraft for the basis. Enemy art from the game Darkest Dungeon proved to be useful, as well as art from Neon Genesis Evangelion and Made in Abyss. Perhaps these beings were corrupted from being in contact with the Artifact, the object of interest of both armies, and were controlled by some god like being?
After making some concept art of both worlds as well as thumbnails to display light values and size, I was ready to make the assets. I decided to go with 3D assets for the environment, since I had experience with making 2D styled 3D assets, and knew it would take me a shorter amount of time.
For the designs of the New Tech Army we wanted to go with a blue and grey color scheme, with a particular focus on curves and energy fields. Conversely, the Old Tech Army was more blocky and scrappy, and most of their equipment was orange or yellow, and covered in dust or rust. For the enemies, we went with a flesh style, almost as if they were made of meat, but with black “blood” or “tears” to reinforce the idea that they didn’t belong.
I was also tasked with making the UI. The most important elements included the main menu, the pause menu, and the in game HUD, where we had to make sure the players knew what turn it was, what enemy they were facing, whose turn it was, where they could go/attack, and how much health everyone had. I looked at similar games, such as Fire Emblem as well as Wargroove and Darkest Dungeon.
All in all, this was a really fun experience, especially working with other artists and game programmers. It sure gave me a new appreciation for turn based strategy games!
