Project Tail Glider & Cosmic Shore

Art Direction, Various Design

Project Overview

Froglet Games aimed to build and then expand upon a flight game prototype to create an arcade scifi flying esport for mobile devices. The protoype was released as Tail Glider, and is currently being expanded under Cosmic Shore.

Programs Used:
Figma, Webflow, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Unity, Github

My Contributions

- Art Direction
- Concept Art
- Menu UI
- Graphic Design
- Web Design

Froglet Games - Tail Glider

Art Director & Designer

2022 - 2023

Tail Glider started out as a chill flight game, and as fun as it was we wanted something more intense and competitive. Many of us played action or MOBA games and wanted to explore that route combined with the intuitive controls from the prototype. In Tail Glider, your ship leaves a physical trail behind you as you fly, which in turn creates a volume of space within each control point. The goal is to create or destroy volume for your team as you fly or with your class abilities. The team with the most volume at each control point gains the territory. The team with the most volume at the end of the round wins!

During its development, I collaborated with and lead a small group of designers and engineers to reskin the game into something more unique. For the prototype, I was in charge of task management and support to the design team as we were working on multiple prototypes simultaneously. After we turned our full attention to Tail Glider and successfully launched it to Apple and Android platforms, we set out to expand on the game. The new project is called Cosmic Shore, and is still in development as we work towards an alpha!
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Tail Glider was my first experience in creating assets for video games, and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to expand my knowledge and discover my love for game dev with a great team!

Froglet Games - Cosmic Shore

Art Director & Designer

2022 - Current

Now that we had our protoype out into the wild that was met with good reception, we turned our attention towards creating a more robust game. Cosmic Shore is the expansion on Tail Glider's controls but with multiple classes, playstyles, and game modes to boot.

We decided to continue in the vaporwave direction but with a marine twist, and as the mechanics of the game grow so do the needs of asset creation, lore, and graphic design. As of now, I am currently working on most of the design needs for anything 2D. Concept work, web design, overall guidelines, logos, icons, etc. Cosmic Shore is still in development so I will be adding to this project over time!

The Concept Work

Our team was not only passionate about video games, but also science - especially physics and biology. So as we brainstormed, there was a fascination with the idea of space being a liquid, and from there the idea of what we coined the "Hypersea" was born. The Cosmic Shore is home to many different kinds of sentient life so while we wanted the ships to reference marine life, while our humanoid pilots were inspired by animals and insects. In both cases, we wanted to prioritize silhouette for ease of distinction in the chaos of battle, especially important when designing for small phone screens.

The environment in the Hypersea was a mixture of digital and organic creatures, with biomes that are loosely based on the aquatic zones of our oceans. The environmental hazards of these biomes were tied to certain passive traversal challenges within the map to spice up game play and shake up strategies.

UI - Menus

The UX designer on the team gave me a skeleton to work with, and I made three UI concepts with different styles. At this time the game title was still being decided and we were using Hypersea as a placeholder.

The first took inspiration from Alien and Star Wars with a retro analog style, the second leaned more futuristic with an organic twist that was inspired by combining Horizon Zero Dawn's icons and Persona 5's flashy style; the third was a diagetic concept where the user is interacting with their pilots via an in universe PDA as they move through the menus. This version was quickly ruled out for due to scope. Ultimately it was decided that the second option fit the organic futurism of the Cosmic Shore, and it was used as the base inspiration for the UI.

Graphic Design - Logo & Web Design

I felt that the overall graphic design of the Cosmic Shore needed to be flexible in order to withstand the expansions we have planned for the game. At this point of development, The Cosmic Shore was a company who aided pilots (the players and NPCs) in traveling to the Hypersea in order to carry out missions or jobs for them. Because of this, I went with an industrial Sci-fi look while referencing the Sci-fi Tribal we decided on for the UI, but a bit bolder. The vaporwave colors are still front and center, as are the parallelograms.

Below are the concepts I sent to the team. Usually when I do logos I aim for at least three options that go through the spectrum of Safe to Risky. It's common for folks to mix and match, and ultimately I've found the product comes out much better. In this case, Option C was the safest, as its was inspired to lean more corporate. Possibly something the company of the Cosmic Shore would have in universe. Option B was heavily based on the style of the chosen UI. Option A was the Risky option in my opinion, as it was intended to feel more industrial and stylish rather than clean. Ultimately we went with Option A and I feel it was the right choice: it gave our other marketing materials a strong direction to go in!

Web Design

The style for the site was created with the new logo in mind. I split the difference between the heavier, more industrial Cosmic Shore logo and the sleek, clean look of the chosen UI guidelines. The logo font was relegated to be for headers only, as it is too hard to read in large blocks of copy. The sub headers use the same font as the UI, Black Acute, and the copy is Aldrich - also used for copy in the UI as well.

I made two wire frames of the site, one being the site in its entirety, and the other a scoped down version that was more achievable for the deadline. The plan was to expand the site as needed over time. Some changes needed to be made when the site was being built, but overall it looks very close to what was designed on paper.

Check it out here: https://www.froglet.games/

- Cosmic Shore is in development -
Here's the discord if you'd like to say hello!
https://discord.gg/mfRkcmV5SU

Want to work together?

If you like what you see and want to work together, get in touch!

carpengr@gmail.com