About
Be Water is a 3D platformer made in 9 months as a capstone project for the NYU Game Center by a team of 7.
I worked on our gameplay design, theming, world design, level design, and 3D art.
Media
Play as a teensy drop of water.
Switch between solid, liquid, and gas to solve platforming puzzles.
Explore a vibrant kitchen countertop.
Or brave the sinister air vent.
Process
Be Water was more than just my team's capstone—it was also a personal game concept I had been sitting on since high school. And at the beginning of the semester, when I had the chance to pitch it to the team, you can bet I took it!
Concept I used to pitch the game.
Screenshot from our final build!
From the start we wanted the game to take place on a kitchen countertop, we just needed to find the right inspiration.
We loved the wood-finished countertop in this kitchen—
—and the sink in this one.
After scouring listings on Zillow, the team really liked this elongated, U-shaped kitchen we kept seeing. It can be hard to tell from an in-game POV, but from an aerial view the inspiration is pretty obvious.
Aerial view of the kitchen in-game.
Despite the look of the screenshots so far, we had actually planned for an entirely photorealistic direction early on. I even modeled the kitchen sink in the style.
The old kitchen sink, rendered in Substance Painter.
But while we all loved the look of our kitchen countertop, we still weren't sure how to translate the idea of "being water" into game mechanics. It was one of the undecided aspects of my original pitch, so a lot of my early ideation was spent exploring potential abilities for our playable droplet.
A silly concept for squeezing through tight spaces.
Big fan of diegetic indicators.
My initial concept for turning into steam.
How does turning into steam affect the player's jump?
Eventually, we decided to expand on the ability to turn into steam by including ice, creating a kind of state-changing mechanic.
Once gameplay started getting locked in, I refocused my attention to 3D modeling. As the only 3D artist on the team, it was my job to model each and every asset we needed—including the apartment itself!
Various props in Maya.
Once assets were modeled in Maya, they were brought over to Unity and colored programmatically, creating the colorful apartmentscape you can explore in-game.
WIP living room in Maya.
Living room in the final build feat. untextured paintings.
You can download Be Water on itch.io.
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