Où est hERVa ?
You are a little sheep who is very hungry. The problem is that you don't know what your mummy looks like... Your goal is to reconstruct your mummy's identity card to find her. To do this, you have for help you your endogenous retrovirus (VRE) profile, identical to your mum. Thanks to genetics!
The Game
This game was made during the Scientific Game Jam 2023 Online Edition, and was inspired by the thesis of Marie Verneret. Through this deduction game, we wanted to discover the universe of endogenous retroviruses, their diversity and their impact on sheep.
• Genre : Educational, Puzzle
• Platform : PC
• Context : Scientific Game Jam
• Team : 7 people. One scientist ; One 3D artist ; One 2D artist ; Two gameplay programmer ; One sound designer and one level designer
• Team : 7 people. One scientist ; One 3D artist ; One 2D artist ; Two gameplay programmer ; One sound designer and one level designer
• Role : Level designer & lighting artist
• Goal : Each VRE sequence is associated with a physical characteristic. You can zoom in on the cell nuclei of the different animals in the herd to see their profiles and deduce which VREs are associated with which physical characteristics. When you think you have found it, you can head to the farm to reconstruct the profile of your hERVa mum.
• Link : https://liria10.itch.io/ou-est-herva
My Work
Level Design
As as level designer, I was in charge of thinking the playable area, and then create it.
As as level designer, I was in charge of thinking the playable area, and then create it.
Firstly, I started to create and sculpt the terrain, then creating a grass texture to apply to it.
After that, I marked out the playable area, and decorated the terrain with the assets provided by the artists.
I ended up implementing the sounds created by our sound designer, testing, and finally build the game.
Which gave us the following level goals :
1 - Explore the surrounding area
1 - Explore the surrounding area
2 - Identify the objective
3 - Understand the VRE gameplay mechanic
4 - Use it to find the right sheep
5 - Turn back to the barn
6 - State the correct physical characteristics associated with sheep
Lighting
As a lighting artist, I was also in charge of manipulating the ambient light within the scene to create a little bit of a Western atmosphere, and to enhance the image with post-processing. I added bloom, ambient occlusion, color grading to bring out the colours, chromatic aberration, vignetting to draw attention to the centre of the image, and some other effects.
The game with/without post-processing
Trailer
