Ragtown is a video game made in 72 hours for the Ludum Dare Jam contest. I took part as one of the artists at Indie4Fun. The theme was 'Entire game in one screen' so we thought in a Western-like town changing over the years, so you can see the same scene but with different buildings -depending on how you manage the population as the Sheriff-. 

 

My job was to create the background you are going to see during the whole game, and make different kind of buildings for the town. Some are unique for each one of the 4 factions you meet, some are variations of the basic town buildings. This variations were made with the idea of making the player see how the place is changing because of the overpopulation of one faction or another. 

The 3 main buildings are, in order of importance, the house, the saloon and the church. They have a neutral look and one variation for each one of the 4 factions.

 

The colors are warm for both the background landscape and the buildings. I tried to have always this palette of reds and soft oranges and yellows, to keep the coherence between the Western-like town and the desert landscape.

 

The look I liked to create was a mixture between a 60's illustration style and geometrical shapes.

For the Indian faction I tried to give more variation of colors. The tipis, totems and feathers are a good example of it.

For the Miner faction, coal was the main theme. The Saloon now is a store selling mining tools and the church is now a train station for the Coal Express. It was a bit difficult to create this building; I had to pick a few different colors in order to highlight the train.

The Businessmen faction has an oil platform as their unique building. They spread oil and contamination all over the town and they worship money.

When the Criminal faction takes control of the town, the House of Pleasures appears and stuff like guns and liquor bottles are very common to see. I really loved to make all those small details.

The design of the ingame HUD was very geometrical, mainly rhomboid shapes with the information the player needs.

Ragtown can be played here.