Shelf Life
About: A co-op arcade game made by a group of 7 students and won 3 awards (Best in Show, Best Arcade Experience and Student Choice) and 7 nominations in GGC 2025. I made the majority of the art assets for this game as well as actively participated in the idea behind the whole concept. Below you can find some examples of the work I did for this project.
Game Description:
"Money is running low, and now small monsters have infested your bakery and are stealing the last of your ingredients. To save the business you and your colleague start killing the monsters and baking them into delicious pastries! Defeat the monsters before they steal your ingredients and bake them into delicious deserts to save the bakery!"
Role: Lead Artist, Project Owner, Game Designer
Date: 2025 April - June (10 weeks)
Character concept art
Finished dessert monster animations and concept art. The goal was to make characters that looked chaotic, silly, colorful and a bit annoying. I went for two characters for each of 3 different color combinations that were used in the game to frost the creatures.
Cinematic
Some visuals from the cinematic that plays at the start of the game for the players to get acquainted with the story as well as the rough storyboard I had made for the idea.
Creating this piece was quite challenging as I had to adapt it to be played on 2 screens of different orientations: One vertical and one horizontal (to fit our physical arcade booth). Therefore, the storyboard was reworked a bit in the process to make it comprehensible when being shown simultaneously on both screens. I also decided to play into the strengths of this unconventional setup, making the vertical screen look like a bakery.
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UI and World
Some more works I did, but this time it was mainly UI, environment and different scenes from "Shelf Life". I tried to make every part of the visuals fit the theme and lean into the bakery aesthetic. I worked closely with the lead programmer, discussing how the player could interact with the different visuals and which parts could be added in engine to further improve the visuals. This proved to be a great learning experience as well, as I got to understand how to create assets that take the implementation possibilities into account.
Lose Screen
Song Selection Screen
Win Screen
Main Menu
Score Grading
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Tutorial Asset
Win Screen animation, revealing the grade
Accuracy Indicators
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Details Screen
Horizontal Lose Screen
Horizontal Idle Screen
Horizontal Game Screen
Crosshairs
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Different level names for each leaderboard
Art Direction
As the lead artist, I was responsible for making sure the game's feel is well portrayed through the visuals as well as answering many questions that other team members had about the aesthetics. The first step was made by deciding on what we want the players to feel when playing "Shelf Life", then moving on to creating a more detailed style guide together with the other artist. Even after that, however, many concepts were drawn, experimenting with composition, design, colors. Many of these tasks also contained working with the game's design and cooperating with teammates from other departments.
Game concept ideation:
Some fragments from the style guide:
Arcade booth design and elements:
Screen Layout, Logo and UI concepts:
Bakers, posters and more animation concepts:
