So for Reverse Snakes environments I decided to design the different areas of the game after the four seasons just to give each area a different look and feel and not just having a generic forest the whole time. Also it was tied in a bit to the idea that you are playing as an apple because the season where the epilogue takes place where you have finally escaped from the snakes and returned home is fall, a season associated with apples and when they are most abundant.
Since I was the only artist on the team I made the decision to designed many of assets for the game to be very modular so that they could be easily repeated within their own level and that I could easily go in and change the color scheme and make small variations to them to create the assets for different levels. This is also one of the reasons I decided to go with a pixel art style for the game, it’s easier to make it tile with itself.
Along with the tiled assets though I also made sure to make a couple unique assets for each area to help make them feel a bit more distinct. Each area had a distinctive tree or plant that both matches the feel and mood for each area and is in general heavily associated with that areas season.
Pine trees for the winter, cherry blossoms for spring, bamboo for the jungle like summer, and giant mushrooms for fall. I also made two variations on each of them to add a bit more variety.
I also set up different particle systems for each level to help set them apart. In winter it snows, in spring there is mist and rain, in summer there are god rays and fireflies, and in fall there are falling leaves.
These decisions payed off because it meant that while many of the other groups in the class had to shrink the scope of their pitches down to only one level because making an entirely new level would take too long, I was able to create all of the assets needed to create four reasonably distinct environments (as well as the rest of the art for the game) in very short amount of time.
