Take Eowyn & Shadowfax to the Vet
Take Eowyn & Shadowfax to the Vet is an open-world RPG filled with fun tasks, engine-building, fetch quests, and trivia. You will explore all of their favorite hiding spots, feed them their favorite treats, and play with their favorite toys. With the completion of each mini-game and side-quest, your chances of capturing the titular cats increases!
But claws and maws are out, so proceed with caution, because they don’t want to go to the vet!
Software: Articulate Storyline, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Audition, Media Encoder, and After Effects
Logo Development
During logo development, I had an initial idea in mind that ended up surprisingly close to the final result. I wanted to emphasize the distinct personalities and styles of each cat.
Eowyn, with her Maine Coon heritage’s plush, lengthy fur (albeit not the massive size), inspired a wordmark that captured her carefree, shaggy spirit.
Meanwhile Shadowfax, a black-and-white tuxedo, was portrayed in a more regal, dignified fashion, with a still fun but more streamlined treatment.
As the logo neared completion, it had the playfulness I wanted, but lacked a pop of color. This led to the addition of a pink bowtie on Shadowfax’s name, providing a vibrant accent that harmonized the entire logo while emphasizing her tuxedo.
Environment Design
The creation of the rooms and spaces went through multiple phases during early development, often with disastrous results.
Initially, the gameplay was set in a photo-realistic world. But after photographing several rooms and stitching them together in Photoshop, major obstacles with perspective, depth-of-field, and shadows became apparent.
It was obvious this layout approach wasn’t feasible, though the gulf between how we perceive our surroundings and how film captures them fascinated me. A quick search confirmed that while our vision seldom interprets perspective as exaggerated, photos taken close to a subject provide exactly that distortion.
The compromise was to photograph as much as possible as a reference, then recreate every room, hallway, and closet in Illustrator. While an incredibly long process, it resulted in a very consistent, controllable look and feel for the final design.look and feel to the design.
Mini-Games
The idea for this game was inspired by a postcard we received letting us know it was time for Eowyn and Shadowfax to visit the vet for their annual check-up, a trip that isn’t fun for anyone involved.
But what if we made it fun? Creating a simulator involving you trying to wrangle your cats into their cages would definitely provide laughs, but it also needed some ridiculousness to it. I wanted to fold in other mundane chores and everyday tasks and provide rewards for them. While some of the mini-games involved fixing a squeaky dryer after you found a toolbox, or pouring yourself a cup of coffee so you had enough energy to ride a bike (apparently with two unhappy cats balanced somewhere on top of you), other treasure hunts involved finding 10 balls of yarn so you could create crochet versions of Eowyn and Shadowfax!
Games Mechanics
The game’s difficulty and odds of success are determined by the number of mini-games completed and inventory items collected.
Each room is a corresponding slide in the file. A variable and trigger will run every time the user moves from space to space, randomly selecting a number from a pre-determined range (for example, at the start of the game, the randomizer is programmed to select a number from 1 to 200). As the user navigates through the gameplay and reaches more milestones, this randomizer will select from an increasingly smaller range of numbers (if you find every item in your inventory and successfully accomplish every mini-game, the odds are 1 to 2). If the assigned number to either cat is selected, that cat will appear in the scene.
By building the game this way, the user is incentivized to complete all the side missions and to fill their inventory in order to make Eowyn and Shadowfax appear more frequently.
Getting them in their cages, on the other hand… that’s up to you!
Description
Goal
Create an engaging, open-world RPG simulator that transforms the mundane (and often stressful) task of taking pets to the vet into a playful, rewarding gaming experience for a personal gift.
Strategy
Utilize a variable-based "odds" system to incentivize exploration and mini-game completion, while employing a hand-drawn vector aesthetic in Illustrator to overcome photographic perspective limitations and ensure visual consistency across the game world.
Deliverables
Custom Brand Identity: Dual-personality wordmarks for Eowyn and Shadowfax, featuring custom typography and accent details.
Environment Design: A comprehensive library of vector-based rooms, hallways, and closets recreated from photographic references.
Interactive Engine: A complex logic framework involving randomized triggers, inventory tracking, and milestone-based difficulty scaling.
Mini-Game Assets: A collection of themed tasks and "treasure hunt" items, including custom-designed yarn balls and household tools.