Moonlight Tower
The Moonlight Tower is a first person walking simulator in which you play as a child living in the outskirts of Glora City, a futuristic dystopian city in which light has become the primary resource. The project was completed over the course of one month as part of my Visual Game and Media Design masters studies at KADK. As part of a group of four students, my role covered art direction, technical art, and 3D modeling, and environment design. 2026.
Summary
Our task was to concept and develop a vertical slice of a walking simulator in the theme of Arctic 2077 that we can use to test player reactions and feedback. We used world building and design techniques like intentional design to describe in detail the intended player journey, and Alex McDowell’s mandala to develope world building.
Chronological Screenshots in Unity
Art Direction and Process
We started by establishing our main player experience values for the game: Awe-inspiring, Yearning, and Absurdity. From there we narrowed in on the story of Glora City, a dystopian city that has fallen into ruin where the primary resource is access to light and energy. We built out a mandala (shown above) to flesh out the world building and backstory.
We defined an art direction that referenced other games like Babdi, Inkblood, and Naissance E, which make use of large scale brutalist architecture and pointilist/noisy shading to create a nostalgic and awe-inspiring atmosphere that was in line with out experience values. We also focused on volumetric light as a feature that is central to the society.
Credit: Thierry Urbain
Credit: Esben Rosenberg
Credit: Chris Darmon
Credit: Thierry Urbain
Futuristic brutalist architecture
Noisy, pointilist shading
Relfected volumetric light
Wonky, absurd characters
I then started sketching out the city layout, and greyboxing the environment to get a sense of scale and to build an asset list.
Initial greybox level
Final level
Technical Art
Shaders, fog, and lighting were the bulk of the technical art work. We opted for a grainy shading to give a nostalgic feeling to the environment. I modified unity standard toon shader to offset the posterization effect with a noise texture and soften it.
Pointilist shader breakdown
Given that light was such a central part of our worldbuilding and story, we focused on several approaches to volumetric lighting. This fake volumetric light shader came in handy for placing rays of reflected light at specific points in the city.
Fake volumetric light beams
Fake volumetric light shader
Testing
We tested our games using eye tracking and sensors to see players emotional reactions to various moments in the game. We used the results as feedback to make level design updates and adjustments to UI.
Player testing session
Player emotional reaction graph