Description: Midnight Identity Crisis is a multimedia project that seeks to explore the question of identity formation through the consumption of different forms of popular culture. It is a blend of 3D, 2D, digital, and traditional art.

Development Process Stylistically, during the brainstorming period, I drew a lot of inspiration from the game Detention by Red Candle Studios, Rene Magritte, and Gekidan Inu Curry’s art, especially their brief interludes in Madoka Magica. Thematically, I was inspired by The Beginner’s Guide, by Davey Wreden. My initial iteration was going to be a low-poly 3D world that was textured with hand drawn assets- however, I soon realized that was out of scope. However, the rooms I had planned out at the time, remained for the second iteration, which soon became my final. In my final, I stuck to having the main 3D rooms having a plain aesthetic, untextured aesthetic, while the separate worlds that the player would emerge into would all vary in artistic styles.

Success In terms of success, I think I’ve created a great atmosphere- it has the dreamlike feeling that I wanted to emulate, and I’m very pleased with how I managed to incorporate together 2D and 3D. It’s long been a goal of mine- being able to take a stab at it for the first time, and seeing it come together in such a wonderful way has been really encouraging. This is also a project that I’ve been meaning to put out for a while, so I’m glad that I finally got to create it.

Failures In terms of failures, I feel like the transition between these worlds is still fairly rough, and it’s something I need to work on- even a simple fade out to black between scenes would help it be a bit less jarring. Additionally, I want to polish the game mechanics even further- right now, it’s a lot of walking into things and hoping it takes you to the next room. On top of that, I feel like I need to make the the theme more explicit- it still feels a little vague, and I want to refine it further.

Lessons Learned I feel like I’ve really learned a lot from this project- working simultaneously in 3D and 2D is a really cool workflow, and I’m looking forward to exploring it further. I’ve also learned that having solid goals for the end of each week is really helpful in getting your project off the ground, and feeling like you’ve accomplished something- so I’ll definitely be including that in my future workflow.

Future Development In the future, I’d like to refine the puzzles, as I mentioned above, and fix some stray colliders. I’d also like to add scene transitions, and make the overall gameplay experience go more smoothly.