LANDED
OVERVIEW
​Landed is single player branching narrative experience where you play as Nate, a robot who lives in the city of Australium on a floating. Early on in the game he discovers the discovers is actually falling into the abyss. While initially distraught by this discovery, Nate learns a way to save himself and others from this certain fate. The player must convince the other members of the island of this truth, and save everybody from this demise over the course of a week days before the island collapses.
Development
2024-Present
Release Date
January 26, 2026
Game Engine
Unity
Platform
Steam (PC)
Roles
Lead Artist, 3D Artist, Environment Artist/ Designer​​​​​, Voice Acting, Writing, Game Design
About
A fellow game designer at UCI, and a friend came to me in spring quarter my freshman year with an idea for a game she had been thinking about for a long time wanting to know what I thought of it. I was the first person she had told about it and I thought the idea was interesting and was willing to work with her on it. We agreed we should pitch it to the Video Game Design Club (VGDC) at UCI. VGDC is a club of around 250 members which allows students to once every quarter pitch game ideas to a student body interested in working on games to get a large enough team to make it happen. At this point the game was just a concept with a lot that needed to be worked out before pitching. I thought the game could be good, and helped her get ready for the pitch. We pitched the game during Fall Quarter 2024. The game has been in development since it was pitched.
After pitching our project grew to a team size of around 17 people. The team has shifted in size throughout development with members leaving and new ones coming onboard but has continued throughout with 5 core members who have been working on it from the start.
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The game has gone through many changes throughout is development and is finally launching soon on Steam. The game will be up for purchase on January 26th, 2026.
My Role
Main Roles:
Lead Artist, 3D Artist, Enviornment Artist/ Designer
Secondary Roles:
Voice Acting, Writing, Game Design
As the Lead Artist I:
- Manage other artists assigning them tasks and giving feedback on their work
- Created the games artistic vision and visual style​
- 3D modeled and textured 80+ game assets (buildings, props, characters, interiors)
- Implemented almost all art assets personally in engine
- Created environmental severalVFX effects
- Designed the games world layout prototyping adapting based on playtester feedback, narrative changes, and team feedback.
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Optimizing/ preparing other artists work:
​- For the character models in the game several were made by other 3D artists throughout development. These models though were untextured and not prepared for use in game with topology issues, flipped normals, unjoined parts, and other minor or large issues. Before implementing another artist's model in game I fix all topology issues, color it, and prepare it for use in game.
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​Other contributions:
- Voice acted 2 side characters (Wallace and Ivan)
- Assisted in writing and game design throughout development​
Development Timeline
2024
mAY
initial concept
A friend and fellow Game Design student of mine at UCI tells me about an idea she has for a game and wants.
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I am interested in the concept and agree to join the project. This idea would slowly become what we have today.
Pre-production took place over the Summer of 2024 in preparation for pitching the game to the VGDC coming Fall.
Pre production
Summer 2024
Game is pitched to VGDC
September
After pre-production we pitched the game to the Video Game Design Club at UCI during their quarterly game pitch night. From this we had many members interested in joining the team.
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First team meeting
oct 16th
Due to how VGDC operates there are far more members wishing to join game projects than projects available. So we got more several members than we anticipated. The starting team size at the point of the first meeting was around 17 people.
Development in Unity began shortly after our first meeting and the first github commits were made. As a team in our first meeting decided that the game would be a 3D isometric game straying away from the origional 2D vision. This decision was made because we did not get any 2D artists from VGDC and I knew how to 3D model.
A major inspiration for the game at this point was Disco Elysium.​​​
Development begins
October 17th
First playtest
The first time we playtested the game with others outside the team was at a VGDC playtesting night for VGDC games.
november 18th
All pitch projects with the VGDC at the end of the quarter showcase their progress on the game. At this point we had prototype with a small portion of the games narrtive implmented.
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Fall project showcase
December 2nd
Development Troubles
November - December
A large hinderance to the games progress throughout this time was due to the games bloated team size. Since we pitched the game to the VGDC we got a bunch of extra members in roles we were not asking for. The team was imbalanced.
Managing the large team proved diffult for my friend and our producer. Meeting attendance was low, deadlines were being missed, and the games development had slowed.
​On the art side the game was really struggling at this point. We had only a few artists and they would often miss deadlines with work that did not meet the quality standards we wanted or expected. The current art assets I was creating were taking a really long time and it was clear the current style was going to need to be changed if we wanted to be able to complete this game in a reasonable amount of time.
ART STYLE ISSUES
December
Sample of assets I mae for the game before the art style was changed
2025
Massive Art style Shift
​I realized that the current art style and direction which the game was going with was not unique enough to make the game stand out and that a large overhaul was needed to give the game a unique look and fix development problems. The higher fidelity models I was creating before were aiming for a realistic detailed style which took too long to make at a large scale with a wide variety of issues associated with them.
The complete change in art style required not only a full re-examination of what stylistically would fit the game but also a large narrative to fit the new aesthetic of the game.
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Though I am glad I pitched the idea and that it was accepted by the team, the change was not easy as my dozens of hours of previous work had to be thrown out and the game's look had to be rebuilt from the ground up. It was the right decision in the end and the game is far better because of it.
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The new style was inspired heavily by the game Monument Valley in terms of environmental art.​​​​​
January
First asset I created in new style
Jan 14th
Second pitch to vgdc
With a basic vision for the new look the game would be heading in, we made a last minute decision to pitch again to VGDC in hopes of getting some more writers and artists to work on the project. At this point in development several of the members who joined from the first pitch had left or were no longer active in the games development.
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Our second pitch to VGDC was successful as we were able to get three 3D artists and a 2D artist to join the team.
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Large narrative shifts
January
With new artists on board I worked closely with them defining a new artstyle which would be unique, be quick to produce, and performant.
​​With the new style all the humans would now be rather robots. This meant that a lot of the game's internal narrative logic had to be re-written to accommodate this change.
Large amounts of writing and art had to be re-done. While initially difficult, this change in direction.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
HUmans --> RoBOTS
new artstyle development
With new artists on board I worked closely with them defining a new artstyle which would be unique, be quick to produce, and performant.
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January
New map layout
We had up to this point been using the same map as the original prototype simply adding more assets onto it as they were created. As development continued the game's world layout made less and less sense.
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Also because of the fixed camera isometric perspective important structures and objects had to be placed in poor positions so that they could be seen at all. It was clear a new layout was needed and I began prototyping a new map.
March
Early new map layout work
Student game showcase (Z3)
Every year the video game development club has a showcase where students can show off games which they have been developing throughout the year. This was an excellent opportunity for playtesting and getting feedback from fellow students.
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Steam page is made for the game and becomes available to the wishlist.​​​​​​​​
Game added to steam
JULY 17th
Game build is put on steam for anybody to play to gain feedback from a wider audience and gather bug reports.
November 19th
Demo live on steam
Game's final release date confirmed and set in stone!