After Life — Sam Mohan

What decision will you make?

A 2D action platformer based off of Greek Mythology. Playing as Milo, the player ventures into the Underworld in search of their memories on their way to the Hall of Judgement to determine their place in the afterlife. With his Spirit Guide named Elvie by his side, Milo must navigate be warry of the residence of the Underworld who guard his memories as if they were their own.

After Life was created as a fourth year thesis project at Toronto Metropolitan University (Ryerson University). Created in Unity, this project served as a passion project and an introduction to creating video games. Within a team of four, each of us wore multiple hats as we had one year to create a prototype. Looking back at this project, I learned the importance of scope and managing timelines within a small team. Having very little development experience, this project was the reason I decided to look further into becoming a game designer as- even with all the struggles, it was fun creating the mechanics and problem solving how each level should be played and navigated.

UI Artist and Character Designer

UI Artist.

As the UI artist on the project, I was tasked in creating icons for the main game screen. These assets would include the number of lives a player has and the amount of attack power the second character Elvie has- Milo’s spirit guide and main source of magic power. I also create the player respawn point, represented by fountains that stand out from the background and are clear to the player that they are able to save the game there and is where they come back after dying.

Character Design.

My main was to task while working on After Life was design all the characters and animate. While creating the characters, I made sure that each of them had a recognizable and unique silhouette making them identifiable and unique. Using the narrative and lore of the world, I made sure that each character matched the different areas they are found in while using color theory to establish a color palette for each character. Characters who are residence of the Underworld would have cooler colors compared to the main character Milo who is newly deceased. Bosses and Godly figures utilize more metallic colors while also being larger then the other characters representing their importance. Originally working in Adobe Illustrator, I later moved into Photoshop as I found the workflow to Spine 2D to be easier when animating.

2D Animation.

While doing character design and having to wear multiple hats, rigging each character was up to me. I used Spine 2D to rig and animate each character. This was my first time having to do both aspects and in the end, I was glad I was the one who designed each character. I was smart to work on one character at a time as this generated a good workflow of creating each limb on a separate layer on Photoshop then rigging and animating on Spine. Although this was a slow process at first, after doing the first character and figuring out how to navigate in Spine, I got much faster. As mentioned previously, this was my first time animating so I spent a lot of time looking at videos on how to do certain movements and mirror that in each character. If I couldn’t find what I wanted, I would record myself and play it back.