Mushroom Kid's Big Grass Sword
2022–24
A 2D platformer about Mica, a mushroom kid with a sword made of grass. It started as a 2022 game jam entry, then won a $10,000 stipend from RIT's Magic Maker Program to become a full game. I drew the backgrounds for the jam, and in production I made everything that wasn't characters or UI: environments, shaders, effects and lighting.
- My part
- Background art for the jam. In production I led art direction: I was the only artist on everything besides characters and UI, so the environments, VFX, shaders and lighting are mine.
- Funding
- $10,000 stipend from RIT's Magic Maker Program for fall 2023. A Kickstarter in 2024 passed its $15,000 goal.
- Built with
- Godot, Godot shading language, Aseprite, Blender
- Awards
- Best Visuals and Best Soundtrack, Game/Music Jam 2022. Aesthetics Award, RIT EDGE. Grand Prize, RPI GameFest 2024.
- Status
- Demo out on Steam; the full game is still in development by Team Broke Kids.
Shaders and effects
When the game went into production in fall 2023, I moved from drawing the world to lighting it. I wrote the game's shaders in Godot: god rays and post-processing that set the light in a scene, a fire effect, and fireflies. The god rays, fire and post-processing are still in the current demo.
The fire took three versions. The first two are below, then the final one in the village.
Color and value
I planned the production backgrounds in color scripts and value sketches before drawing them.
The jam, 2022
The game started at Game/Music Jam 2022 as Sword of the Morel. I was the background and asset artist and drew the pixel-art world in Aseprite, over 60 hours of it. That look won the team Best Visuals.
Watch the trailer, produced by Mary Haley.
The hard part was fit. The levels were built at a different resolution than my sprites, and a jam leaves no time to redo either. We worked it out together as the art went in.
After the jam
The $10,000 stipend from RIT's Magic Maker Program paid for development through fall 2023. The team then formed Team Broke Kids LLC and ran a Kickstarter from April to June 2024, which passed its $15,000 goal.
I left in May 2024 to join Respawn Entertainment as a VFX intern on the Star Wars Jedi team. I kept sending the team background art through the Kickstarter launch.