ALEXIA MANDEVILLE

   Role: Co-Founder Bodeville, Game Designer, Character Artist
   Engine: Unity
   Platforms: Steam
   Project: Watchmakers on Steam
   Team Size: 2

In a small desert named Ozona, known for its magical properties and time-traveling abilities, a courier named Domino receives an assignment to deliver a watch from a mystical wanderer. Explore the world and solve puzzles to deliver the watch before it's too late.

Contributions

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Game Design, UI Design, and Art – This was a two person effort... Working with an engineer, I concepted the art style, developed UI in Figma, created the characters in Blender, designed puzzles and the level, and made shaders and materials in engine to get the look and feel we defined. I charted out game systems. I wrote the story with my eng partner using Twine and Yarnspinner. Marketing – I contacted press and influencers to play our game and prepared all content for Steam's Next Fest where we were hightlighted in the puzzle adventure category. I spent a lot more time on Steam key art and logos and painted over game screenshots using Procreate.

This was our second game as a studio at Bodeville. Watchmakers, a 3D puzzle platformer adventure, was released on Steam as a demo for Next Fest. Watchmakers was heavily inspired by A Short Hike and Zelda, and we wanted a game that had social commentary, story, and made players think. This was also a fun challenge for me, to develop many different characters with a cohesive style as I learned to model and animate in Blender and left Maya behind.

Character Design

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Character design was heavily influenced by A Short Hike, Animal Crossing, and scope considerations. I learned Blender on this project (coming from Maya) including modeling, rigging, and animating. I wanted the characters to be simple and all be derived from mage-like creatures, all approachable, humorous, mystical, and a bit mysterious to the player. They each had their own personality through their outfits, animations, and dialogue patterns. For a small open world game, they needed to be scalable enough for a team of two to make even more characters to fill the world.