• I won’t sugar coat it, our project was a big undertaking, to say the least, and unfortunately we ran out of time to create a fully fledged game.

    As a team we were all responsible for the completion of this project and as the manager it was my responsibility to make sure we were on track, however two members of our group were not honest with the progress they were making, forcing us to have a very barebones game at the end of our project deadline.

    I front loaded much of the work so that everyone would have ample time to complete their tasks, unfortunately this was all for naught.

    We presented an unfinished game at our iSchool 2024 showcase, and the judges for the game section enjoyed the creative aspects of our game, but were underwhelmed with the playability.

    I want to be completely transparent with you, which is why I’m not going to pretend this was a perfect project, sometimes things don’t work out the way you planned, what matters is how you react and adapt to the unexpected.

    We got a C for our final grade on our capstone, this hurt not only because this was the second time in my life I’ve gotten a C on anything, but because this was a semester of work that was just C worthy. That being said, my grade for individual contribution was an A, both my mentor and professor for the class acknowledged that I put my all into this project. My mentor even stated this:

    “It’s very clear to me that you did a good job on this project; your art is spectacular”

Senior Capstone

  • “BitterSweet is a 2D top-down pixel RPG game which follows Lem, a con artist who lives in 1980s pre-apocalyptic San Francisco. As he struggles to reckon with his past relationships in order to get his cat back before the world ends, he faces a bigger threat to himself and all of food kind. We used Unity, Aseprite, Procreate, and Garageband to carefully craft this BitterSweet play experience. A game where your choices matter, poses the question will you help Lem make amends or stick to his rotten ways?”

    -BitterSweet, 2024

    Aside from coming up with the concept itself, I also designed the levels, characters, wrote the narrative, and all the dialogue.

    Originally, the entire game was going to be pixelated, however given time constraints it was too much to create an entire pixel game from start to finish. Following advice from my mentor, I hand drew each level and exported the layers individually from Photoshop so that I could rebuild the drawing in Unity.

    I drew the character concept art using Procreate and sent the reference sheets to the two Sprite renderers for reference.

    After writing all the dialogue it was also my job to add it into the game using the dialogue system one of my teammates created.

  • Having a project that was meant to represent the culmination of our college careers remain unfinished, didn’t sit well with me. After graduating I spent the remainder of December and the month of January to finish this game alongside one of my group members.

    My new tasks now consisted of changing the inventory UI, fixing the dialogue system, adding and creating character SFX, creating puzzles, making a character info page, making the boss level, and creating the end credits.

    This game is by no means perfect, but it was a labor of love from start to finish. I learned a lot while making this game and am proud of what I was able to accomplish.

    After sending the finished version of the game to our mentor he had this to say:

    “Rarely do I see a group with the integrity and resolve to take one of their projects out of class and revise it for a “second release.”  That’s kind of special, and says something about the three of you.  I see your particular fingerprints on the polish – the app icon, the trailer, the character bios.  Bravo on giving your game the personality it deserves.”

With love, Laila

The characters and levels became somewhat of a love letter to John Hughes and other iconic films from the 70’s & 80’s. The reason for this was meant as an homage to my parents, specifically my dad, who I would watch these movies with growing up. My dad is a first generation immigrant who taught us the value of hard-work but also reminding us to enjoy life. I wanted to make something that could express my gratitude in a meaningful way for both of us.

Each character's design had inspirational roots in films like Ferris Buller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink, The Godfather, The Breakfast Club American Psycho, These films also inspired the level designs, Lem’s room is modeled after Ferris Buller’s and Don Graisin’s office is modeled after Vito’s Office in The Godfather.

CHARACTER DESIGN

LEVEL DESIGN