.SONDER
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DATE
Fall 2023 - Winter 2024
SOFTWARE
Unreal Engine, Maya, Photoshop, Procreate
PROJECT TYPE
Game Development - VFX Artist, Creative Director, Producer
ARTSTATION PAGE
SONDER is an innovative co-op adventure game in 2.5D with a fleshed out backstory and heavy focus on visual storytelling. Working together by using their unique abilities, two players get to engage in collaborative puzzle solving and dynamic combat. The game puts an emphasis on a psychological narrative that explores the essence of humanity.
I was the VFX Artist, Creative Direction and Producer for SONDER, which was created by a total of 12 developers under 10 weeks as part of our Bachelor's Degree in Computer Game Development. This page will dive into some of my work for the game and share my thought processes behind different design decisions. For a more visual overview, you're welcome to see my different ArtStation pages for SONDER. You'll find them linked here to the left.
If you, and a friend, would like to play SONDER for yourself, you can download it for free on Steam. Search for SONDER in the Steam app or click this link to be transported to the Steam page.
.MY ROLES
.VFX ARTIST
As the only VFX Artist for SONDER I got to create all visual effects for game, build shaders as well as design and implement the lighting for all parts of the game. I also created all of the post-process effects and wrote dynamic scripts for the implementation of these.
.CREATIVE DIRECTOR
The role of Creative Director for SONDER meant it was my responsibility to establish a compelling and cohesive aesthetic profile and effectively communicate it to the team. Leading the entire creative process, I oversaw and guided the team throughout the development, ensuring we stayed true to the established creative vision in everything we did.
.PRODUCER
My role as the Producer of the project was synonymous with making sure the whole team shared, and was striving for, the same vision. Assisted by the Art Lead, Programming Lead and Game Designer, I made sure the entire process stayed collaborative and inclusive while also designing and implementing a productive workflow that would meet our deadlines.
.MY GOALS & VALUES
.BALANCING IMMERSIVE & INFORMATIVE VISUALS
Early in the process, I pitched the idea that SONDER would not include any written or spoken word, instead focusing on visual storytelling and mysterious scenarios. My main focus from the very start of the project was to create an immersive experience with a defined visual profile that would communicate the feeling and pacing that we aimed for for that specific space. While the game did not include any written or spoken word, it still had an incredibly thought out story that became the backbone for the majority of the design decisions. This combination, a detailed story but no words, was definitely intriguing to me, especially since I also prioritized the player's experience in a more functional, instructional, sense. It was of the outmost importance to me that we portrayed a distinct setting, mood and story while also giving instructions to guide the player, and I did not want one side to get compromised by the other. It would not be easy and would take a lot of planning, discussing and iteration - but I was certain it could be done.
.CONSISTANCY
During the project I directed and oversaw the visual elements of the game, focusing on the details that makes the whole in order to portray a visual profile consistent with the theme and story of the game. As the Creative Director it was my job to make sure the overall aesthetics, core pillars and the different areas of development were working together. Since the game relied solely on visuals, my job of securing a cohesive visual expression in all aspects of the game, became even more important.
.GUIDING A STRONG-WILLED TEAM
The team behind SONDER stepped into the project with high ambitions from driven developers eager to put their skills to use and aim as high as possible. We had the vision of creating something new that we had not seen before, combining core pillars in innovative ways. We aimed to combine different genres by picking out the best aspects from different ones and explore how well we could come up with a new recipe for a game. As driven as they come, we as developers wanted to prove that it was possible to combine both co-op and combat elements with a well designed psychological narrative and immersive environments. Not only that - we also wanted to package all of this into a 2.5D space, continuing to challenge the conventional formats of gaming.
Having all of these aspirations, in a team full of driven and strong-willed developers, it demanded an organized workflow, consistent and open communication, and someone to oversee the project as a whole - which is were my role as Producer came in. As part of my role, chosen by the members of the team, I made sure every crew member was rowing their boat in the same direction. My constant priority was that every team member would feel that they were an important part of the project, focusing on building trust through the distribution of responsibilities. Instead of trying to control my team members in an effort to secure a good final product, I was convinced that the best efforts are made when people have a sense of agency and trust their own abilities to contribute to the project.
.VISUAL EFFECTS
.DESIGNING VFX
The visual effects of SONDER where made in Niagara (Unreal Engine 5.3) and shader materials, using Maya to model meshes for different effects, and Photoshop and Procreate to create the textures. Due to the setting and character designs, most of the VFX had a supernatural, sci-fi inspired, look, but I still wanted everything to be grounded in the physical space and react in real time. This resulted in the usage of, for example, collision modules, distance fades and mesh sampling.
The collision made the effects interact with their environments and react to the players movements in real-time. The same goes for the use of distance fade modules, where the materials used in the effects kept track of their pixel position in world space in relation to other surfaces around them. Through the use of mesh sampling in Niagara, I was able to create emitters that adapted to the characters movements in real-time, as well as shaping themselves around the object they were attached to.
.DASH
The Dash effect appears as a trail of light following the Soul character for about one second when they use the dash mechanic. My goal was to create an effect that felt like it was coming from character, rather than being added on top of it. I strived for an organic, as well as supernatural, look since this was also the idea for the Soul character.
By spawning slow, hanging particles and generating location events for each one, I was able to draw a ribbon between them, using a ribbon renderer for the lines. The thickness of the ribbons based on the speed of the character at spawn and tapers out over their lifetime. I added curl noise to create the organic feel of the strings, making them almost feel alive while following the air dynamics of the space. The color of the ribbons were set to be the same color at the character material and were emissive in order to add to the supernatural feel since the effect would glow in the dark.
The Flying Hook Sparks effect, following the Robot character when they’re flying through the air, were made using similar techniques. Of course, a lot of things were different between the two effects (like the shader used, the movement of the curl noise, the speed of the movement etc), but they stemmed from the same original design.
.DISSOLVING EYE
The Dissolving eye effect is made entirely from a shader that is controlled through a Dynamic Material Instance in Unreal Engine’s Blueprints. It was created to animate the spawning and de-spawning of the Eye enemy. The goal for the effect was to make it feel as if the Eye was materialising in front of the players. The mesh for the character had an organic look, being a combination of an eye and a brain, while the game has the supernatural, sci-fi inspired look. Therefore, my aim was to incorporate these two aesthetics in the effect.
The eroding look was partly achieved by sampling a panning texture, creating the overall “shape” of the cutouts. I first tried using a pixelated texture for a more digital look, but later decided to use a texture that had a lot more details and intricate shapes to match the fleshy looking mesh. I added a pink emissive colour to the erosion mask that matched the base colour of the original character texture. In order to add more dimension to the erosion part of the shader, I added a Lerp function for the colour in order to fade the edges of the erosion and add more dimensions. By subtracting a mask from the erosion texture, controlling the bounds, bias and falloff through exposed parameters (controlled through Blueprints) the character appears to appear and dissolve into thin air
.HOOK SPARKS
The hooks were intractable objects that the Robot character could use to reach new areas of the levels, but after some play testing we realized that they were not easy to spot for the players. We decided to add an effect to the hooks in order to draw the player’s attention towards it. Since the only character that was able to interact with the hooks was a computer-like robot (while the other is a soul-like creature with an organic, etherial, style) I wanted to incorporate some electrical elements to the effect that would signal to the players that the object was related to that specific character. I also made sure to match them in colour for the same reason.
By sampling the mesh location of the hook in Niagara, and using randomised WPO for the particles, they would always be surrounding the object. The particles themselves were rendered using mesh renderers with a panning lightning shader applied to them. The lightning shader were made by generating a band onto distorted texture coordinates, after which the data passes through randomised time and panning noise nodes in order to animate the band while giving it its lightning shape.
The The Niagara system could control the WPO of the mesh particles themselves, using a dynamic parameter that was multiplied by a noise texture in order to add an uneven 3D-shape to lighting bolts. This way, the lightnings would not lay flat onto the spiral particles but would be actually distorted in their own local positions as well.
By keeping the material one-sided, the lightnings got a more varied and dynamic look while a randomised spawn probability parameter in Niagara added an organic look the behaviour of the effects.
.SPAWN
The Spawn effect was played before the characters respawn and demanded very detailed materials to achieve the look I had envisioned. I aimed to create the illusion of the character “loading” into the scene, struggling while doing so. I also wanted to keep a digital, retro look for the effects. The two different characters had their own instance of the effect, adjusted specifically to their different looks and styles.
Two identical mesh renderers are played through individual emitters, each with their own edited version of the original mesh material. These materials could offset the surfaces they were attached to, using heavy WPO to drag the pixels in different directions by sampling a panning texture. A third emitter, also using the same mesh and distortion material but set to wire frame mode, created a silhouette of the character. All off the mesh emitters have jagged alpha scales over their lifetime, making it appear as though the characters were materialising in the physical space. I added some RGB coloured lights, quickly swiping past and around the character to add to the glitch look. Finally, before the system dies, a large flare appears on top of the other elements. It was done to imitate the shape of an old school TV-screen shutting down and it made the effect feel more digital rather than supernatural.
One detail I added, which was barely perceptible, was that the flare changes in colour over time. This gradient fades between the primary colours and depending on the instance (what character the effect is attached to) the final colour of the flare is the same as the main colour of the character. This meant that the flare on the effect of the Robot respawn effect ended in a blue tint and the one for the Soul character ended in a yellow tint. This was definitely a small detail but I felt it made the blend between VFX and player character smoother.
.ABILITY UNLOCK
The Ability Unlock effect played when the players unlocked new powers in the game. Since the effect essentially changed the character’s physical being I immediately wanted something that surrounded their body mesh while also sticking to the technical sci-fi aesthetic.
I ended up creating a lightning material, panned over a spiral mesh, that rotated around the bodies of the characters while the shader faded away. This made it look like there was electricity hovering in the air around the characters, and adding simple airy particles completed the look of the characters almost “shedding” the previous version of them selves. The skeleton mesh sampling made the effect dynamic, with the emitter shaping itself around the mesh and following the character as it moved around in real time. Just like I did for all of the character-related effects, I made two instances of this effect - one for each character - where I fine-tuned parameters for shapes, movements and colours to correspond with the characters’ profiles.
.LIGHTING
SONDER tackles themes such as introspectiveness, consciousness and identity, so I wanted to create environments that felt desolate and vast in order to portray the feeling of isolation and uncertainty
I wanted to portray a world that was quietly falling apart. The outside landscape was very still, without any sign of life except for the players themselves, showing some details of past despair and chaos still hanging in the air. Through the use of post process materials, the outside environments had a low contrast and saturation. By blending the colour together like this it promoted a feeling of a vast and desolate landscape.
The majority of the inside scenery was dark and foreboding, giving space for the player’s own imagination to fill in the blanks as to what was hiding in the shadows.
For the inside environments, I aimed to create a space that felt cold, barren and clammy. I used a lot of green and blue tints to the lights and applied a custom colour balance for every room in the post process.
I wanted to players to be able to smell the mould in the walls and hear the echo of their own thoughts, bouncing between the hostile walls. I created different light function materials to add flickering light sources throughout the buildings to add to the sense of being in a decaying structure.
There are still some fragments of hope and tranquility, mainly shown in “The Field” scene, where the scenery drastically changes from the previous dark and suffocating spaces. Instead, the players are running onto an open field, scattered in a morning mist and warm sunlight. The aim for The Field was for the players to feel a sense of hope, peace and light. After battling your own demons your reach a sense of almost tranquility where you know your self better, it’s easier to breathe and you see things more clearly - this was the reference for The Field.
I wanted The Field to feel like a literal breath of fresh air, taking inspiration from the early summer mornings on the Swedish countryside. I adjusted the light scattering colour to be a cool toned white, while the sunlight itself had a warm hue. I added a light fog to reference the morning mist hanging in the air. I also directed for the camera to pan out from the players to, again, create the sense of a vast landscape where you could be free to run around however you’d like.