In "Bridges to Yesterday: Prelude", players embark on a poignant journey through the memories of an elder woman, navigating the complexities of love in her era. Mend the broken bridges and re-ignite their love for each other after 50 years.
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Our game was proudly awarded second place in the WE CREATE Android Game Jam 2023 - Asia!
About this project
Bridges to Yesterday is set in Southern Vietnam under US occupation, a highly turbulent political era with oppressive cultural standards. Our project aimed to retell the tragic love stories that had to be kept secret during this time, and give them a fictional happy ending.
In this project, I took on the role of screenwriter, where I helped develop the story and character dialogue, as well as produce any other necessary written content.
I was also the main concept artist and animator, developing the visual style, character design and character animation.
Initial Concept
Initially, the story was going to be set in a magical academy with the design inspired by the Vietnamese mountainous minority ethnic groups. However, after some revisions, we changed the setting to make the story feel more real and impactful.
We also adapted the narrative to focus more on the 2 main characters relationships, instead of the full cast of characters.
This story is inspired by the tales we heard from our parents who grew up in this time period and only knew of these ‘scandalous’ stories in the form of schoolyard gossips or neighborhood rumors.
Visual Style
The aesthetics of the game is inspired by Vietnamese public schools. From the famous recognizable floor tiles and architecture that is inspired by French design motifs, to the everyday items that any Vietnamese student would see in their classroom. I also drew all the text by hand using a square brush to mimic the cursive writing style by fountain pen that we all had to learn in school.
Color Usage
The color is used deliberately to highlight important elements in the game narrative. Additionally, the story takes place in both the past and present, we wanted to use color to indicate the changing timeline.
Character Design
Our main characters are Lily, a demure young lady from an affluent family who is curious about the world, and Rose, the “bad influence” who just transferred to Lily’s class. So, for the design of each character, we wanted to show off their distinct personality, both in their young and adult design.
Before animating the scenes, I made a rough animatic to show the game designer, since the animation is a core mechanic of the narrative interaction, the game designer and I worked on timing the animation together.
Animation Process
The models for the game was made and rigged using Adobe Animate. It was my first experience animating characters for an interactive fiction-type game, since unlike normal animation that just plays out on a timeline, game animation is cued and play on-click.
So, I animated the characters and exported them as a sprite-sheet that can be imported into the Unity game engine and split into smaller animation sequences for different options that may be chosen by the player.
Sprite Design
