David Shute: Concept Art and Abandoned Videogames
Here’s a bunch of pictures - I don’t normally do a lot of concept stuff, I prefer to just dive in and make it up as I go along, but I do have a few in-progress images from various abandoned projects:
Kemiro is the direct ancestor of Small Worlds - it was going to be a flip-screen platformer, heavily inspired by Nifflas’ Knytt games. I got bored after a while though and it ground to a halt.
The tower defense game was something I was really into making for a while. I even had a simple voxel engine to draw the tanks and things, (the larger tanks in the picture are voxels,) although on reflection I think they look pretty murky and unappealing.
The cartoony platformer was a great big Metroidvania that I was trying to write, for some insane reason in AGS. Got as far as making the engine and a few rooms then the enormity of the task I’d set out for myself became apparent and I got disheartened. Was going for a sort of Ico mixed with Miyazaki aesthetic, but looking back I think it looks pretty amateurish. Especially the horrible main character sprite. And I remember one of the progression gates was that the windmill would blow air at you, pushing you back unless you could run fast enough to overcome it. For some reason it never occured to me that windmills do not work like that.
Managed to find a page of Small Worlds concept art too.
