The element of human presence plays an important role in Exogears. Since players control mechanical robots during most of their playtime, characters become an important emotional anchor. In order to help players dive into the world we developed, we designed a space opera backstory filled with a rich cast of scoundrels and misfits. The interaction between them then serves as motivation for players to progress in the game. Being on the mobile platform meant we are inheriting the specific form factor and use the case of the device. We want to convey a better sense of storytelling through visual presentation. In the sense that players can immediately understand who each character is by looking at their image. Our target audience is males within the age group of 25~ 45. Most of these core players grew up consuming 80's movies and anime. During the brainstorming phase, we drew inspirations from classic IP's and combined it with modern-day rendering treatment. The result is a very fresh aesthetic that pleases both the East and Western target audience.

The team wanted to faithfully translate the graphic novel look of our 2D illustration to the final 3D models in-game. A custom shader and production workflow were developed in UNITY to allow us to achieve the final look.

Mech customization is the core essence of Exogears. The biggest challenge is formulating a framework that gives good looking results no matter what kind of combination players use to create their own mech. Once we were able to nail down a set of rules that governs the overall look in the world of Exogears, we were able to branch out into different unique variations. The complex nature of each mechanical part also prompted a different work flow for concept production. Every part is treated as a unique prop, and defined individually once we established the look of the whole mech. This process allowed us to identify problematic areas early on within the design cycle. It also sped up the 3D production since all uncertainty within the design is eliminated.

For the game's intro, we designed a 90's manga style graphic novel the celebrates the works that inspired our vision in the first place. The work was done as a flat graphic, then cut up into layers, and imported into Unity for animation.