JOSHUA LOO

Hi, I'm Josh; I'm an Information Science B.S. with a minor in statistics. I am also a freelance artist who enjoys working on game development projects.Thank you for taking the time to take a look at my portfolio!

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ABOUT ME

My name is Joshua Loo or Josh for short! I am a Korean-Malaysian-American student at UNC Chapel Hill studying information science and statistics. I am passionate about data analysis and being able to express myself creatively.One of my hobbies is game design. This passion has brought me to join various game design communities. Through these communities, I have been a part of several projects giving me skills both for design and general life skills.I have also worked with multiple different esports teams, such as CRWN Corp, Yuum Esports, and X1LES, as a team manager and coach. Through these projects and groups, I gained experience and am incredibly comfortable working with a diverse range of people and teams.

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My Role and Contributions

I was responsible for multiple parts of the process in the game: directing, lead visual design, eventing, assistant narrative, and sound design.I also playtested the game to make sure that there were no glaringly outstanding bugs and to make sure that everything flowed properly.

The Game Has Ended

The Game Has Ended is a psychological horror RPG with the player going through various rooms, solving various puzzles to progress. It was made in RPG Maker XP using the plugin Pokemon Essentials.I had attempted multiple game jams in the past. However, this was the first game that I have ever completed production on. This was also the first game that I directed and produced.

Constraints

Planning of The Game Map

Sound Design

An important aspect of horror games is how the sound affects the players. Since we decided to go in the psychological direction rather than traditional horror games, we could not just rely on the sounds of monsters.While I did not create any of the audio, I chose a background song that could be played on a loop which would create a sense of unease throughout.To further this unease, certain rooms would play different pieces of audio, such as a heartbeat, or no audio at all to make the players feel like something different was about to happen.

Art Design

Before the jam started, we decided what kind of game we wanted to make as a group. We decided on a top-down, third-person horror game.The immediate first step was to research horror games and what makes things "scary." Since we were working from a top-down perspective, it would be hard to make things scary in the traditional sense. In other words: no relying on cheap jump scares. So in response, we decided to go the route of a psychological horror game and lean heavily into making the story unnerving.I initially made the assets very dark and grimy to imitate some of the more traditional horror games, however, when playing through, the art direction didn't feel right. I changed the art style to be a lot more bright and "happy" to create a sense of cognitive dissonance between the appearances and the actual theme of the game.

Character Art Evolution

Challenges and What I Learned

The biggest challenge that plagued me was the idea of scope. There were many ideas that I wanted to do, such as a mini-boss or more complex puzzles. Due to the time limit or my skills at the time, I would not be able to complete them in time, so they had to be cut.
Because of the cut content, I had to learn how to make up for it in other ways. An example would be the mini-boss that was planned, we had to replace it with a new story beat and a cutscene. It was a small challenge to figure out how to adapt the story from there, however, my talented teammates made it work.One of the biggest things that I learned throughout the process of creating this game, is how to lead and manage a team. Prior to this project, I had only been a part of a project as someone who would work under another person.

ReWilding

Rewilding is a short game about leaving your social bubble by interacting and completing quests from the different townsfolk in the overgrown city. It was made in RPG Maker XP using the plugin Pokemon Essentials.I was recruited by my friends to join them on the project as on of the artists.

Constraints

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My Role and Contributions

During the production of Rewilding, I was responsible for designing the sprites for the variety of characters as well as the title screen background.Due to the time crunch, we purchased the tileset graphics from different artists and I compiled and organized them so that they could go straight into the game without too much confusion.

Sewing Chaos

TBA

My Role and Contributions

TBA

Pokemon Lycoris

Pokemon Lycoris (Previously named Pokemon Elysium) is a Pokemon fan game made in RPG Maker XP using Pokemon Essentials and Ruby.This is one of the long-term projects that I have been working on since 2020 as an artist. As the project progressed, I gained other roles, such as management roles.

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My Role and Contributions

I was the a comanager for the art department of the team. I helped to design a lot of the background assets used such as buildings or a title screen. I also produced concept sketches for the mappers and other tile designers to use when creating the environments and places for the player to explore.I also created various spreadsheets to help organize different aspects of the process such as a "pokedex."The most minor task that I helped out with was shaping the narrative story. I did not do a lot in this corner but I helped to produce ideas that the narrative team could work with.The final contribution that I helped out with was being one of the two social media managers for the project. While the project was being actively worked on, I made sure to procure interest in the project with various tweets or discord messages to the community.