Final level art by Nic Freitas
Light of the Zo-gears: Zone Rush
Visual Worldbuilding & Art Direction
TL;DR
The challenge
My approach
Created moodboards to align the team on tone and aesthetics
Defined visual systems for environment design, color, and worldbuilding
Produced key assets (HUD, capture points, health packs, loading screen)
Documented guidelines to enable consistent execution
The impact
Reduced art review cycles by establishing clear direction upfront
The game launched with great success - increasing unique daily matches by 134% compared to previous game modes
The team gained confidence in their work by having an artist lead the direction
My Role
Game Art Lead
Art Direction, Visual Systems, UI Design
The Team
Nic Freitas (2D Artist), Nathaniel Croce (Game Designer), 3 Engineers
The Full Story
The Visual Problem
Screen captures of Outpost Run
The Goals & Creative Intent
Before designing anything, we aligned as a team on narrative goals for the game level.
Let's set the scene:
The game level needs to be a training ground arena within a futuristic city. Players attend with their Zo-gear to practice, train, and grow against other players.
What we also wanted to do was bridge the gap between the setting and environments from our other game modes:
The Mars planet and industrial environment from Outpost Runs and,
The grass-growing, life-breathing nature of the casual game, Terraforming.
Things we needed to keep in mind:
Keep it kid-friendly and approachable
It should be sci-fi futuristic, but grounded in reality. All of the game objects and mechanics needed to make sense in the narrative world
This included the walls, capture points, and health packs
Stylized, but not too cartoonish. We want to introduce colours without making it look unrefined
Moodboards & Exploration
The first thing I did was scour the internet for inspiration. I wanted to establish tone, textures, colour, and concepts.
I used google search results, as well as AI-assisted image generation as a rapid ideation tool to allow us to explore multiple visual tones and directions quickly while swapping ideas and suggestions before official production began.
Moodboards exploring futuristic city stadiums and existing game battle arenas
Rough concepts by Nic Freitas
The 2D concept artist, Nic, and I collaborated back and forth, using these images as the basis for colours, terrain treatments, and exploring the look for the walls and foliage in the level.
Some things didn't always fit, or feel right. Oftentimes we found ourselves brainstorming concepts that were ultimately out-of-scope. It was important that we made design decisions that would allow us to ship the game on time, which meant sacrificing some cool ideas.
Defining & Documenting
Once alignment was reached, I worked closely with, Nathaniel, our Game Designer to translate narrative intent into concrete visual guides, and then continued to communicate those guides and intent clearly to the 2D Artist during feedback sessions.
Key areas of visual direction included:
Environment Design
Moving away from rigid tile layouts towards more organic, modular spaces
Defining walls and boundaries that felt functional, not arbitrary
Using color blocking to clearly communicate lanes vs jungle
Color & Contrast
Introducing brighter, more saturated colours
Ensuring characters popped clearly from the environment
Avoiding muddy mid-tones during combat
Worldbuilding Through Assets
Every object and asset needed a narrative explanation
Capture Points, walls, and props were designed to feel like real world structures
Asset Direction & Production Work
In addition to directing the visual approach, I contributed hands-on production art to help solidify the style and set quality benchmarks.
Assets I personally created were:
In-game HUD (UI design)
Capture Points (production art)
Health Pack (concept & production art)
Game thumbnail & loading screen (illustration)
In-Game HUD
I designed the in-game HUD, establishing a layout with a mini map, top bar for player information, bottom ability bar, and health indicators for players, minions, and towers.
I followed established MOBA HUD conventions, because players rely on genre familiarity for instant readability in high-pressure gameplay. I intentionally sacrificed visual flair and immersion for functionality, but still tried to keep the sci-fi futuristic aesthetic. In fast-paced PvP, players need to view information quickly, so the HUD exists to deliver information, not tell a story.
The HUD needed to function as peripheral support, not a focal point, so I stripped the mini map to essentials (player positions, capture point and tower status) and used high-contrast hierarchy, including a yellow health bar for the current player to ensure easy visibility.
I produced the Capture Point assets, which started as industrial fans that disperse seeds to transform the training ground into a grassy environment. They later turned into more traditional Capture Points.
These objects serve as a functional gameplay objects, while visually connecting the Zone Rush game mode to Terraforming's (a casual game mode) core mechanics.
Capture Points needed to balance narrative storytelling with gameplay clarity. The industrial fan design was narratively strong, but wasn't immediately recognizable. I maintained the silhouette and used color/animation feedback to ensure instant readability during combat.
Players shouldn't have to guess what they're interacting with, functionality should take priority over decorative detail.
Final production assets
Health Pack
Lastly, I produced the Health Pack asset: a mechanical, gear-inspired item with a green glow that matches the polish and style of the Capture Points and Towers already in-game. Users run into this item to collect it, and gain an immediate amount of health back.
The gear-inspired design reinforced its functional role within the Zo-gear game system, and the green glow matched healing abilities and VFX to establish a consistent visual language around recovery. This ensured players could identify health pickups immediately without breaking visual cohesion across the level.
Final production assets
I outlined a storyboard, of sorts, for the animation, as well as separated the assets to be used for animation.
Consistency with established styles contributes to a stronger, more cohesive gameplay and narrative-building experience.
Loading Screen Illustration
The loading screen illustration was a personal initiative I pitched and advocated for to further strengthen the game's city stadium narrative and guide the story and worldbuilding before players entered the game. Rather than focusing on gameplay mechanics, this piece aimed to establish the environment and mood, showcasing the scale, energy and atmosphere of the training arena. It became an opportunity to bring illustration and narrative together, helping frame the PvP experience as something playful, energetic, and inviting rather than high-stakes or competitive.
I made this illustration using blender for the building layout, and Procreate for the final artwork.
Final illustration
Final Zone Rush level art
Impact
The new game mode shipped with great success!
Within the same time period, Zone Rush saw 134% more daily unique matches than Outpost Runs.
Zone Rush saw higher daily unique player counts outside of school terms than Outpost Runs, meaning Zone Rush saw increased engagement for our core player-base.
For getting kids to play a game at home from a software they use in school, that's pretty impressive.
Outcome
Once the visual direction was established, the difference was immediate.
The new game mode gained energy, personality, and life
The game world started feeling developed and real
Artists felt more confident in their decisions
Visual consistency was much easier to maintain
The team no longer felt like it was "figuring it out as we go"
And kids clearly loved the new visual direction!
It became evident that
having an artist lead visual direction resulted in a stronger, more unified experience
For me, this project solidified the importance and impact of clear art direction and guidance in a collaborative game development environment.
Click to watch Zone Rush gameplay!
Reflections
This project reinforced several core lessons about art direction:
Visual systems matter more than individual assets
Artists need clear constraints, not vague ideas or inspiration
Narrative and visuals must be developed together
Art direction is as much about communication as it is about taste
If revisiting this project today, I would further formalize the work into a living style guide to support long-term scalability, something I now actively prioritize in creative leadership roles.
