announce trailer (HD 60fps ~25Mo) also available on youtube

Roles: Art Direction Character Art Environment Art UI Marketing Art for Digixart

I led art for a game about a road trip set in a fictional country. It's a procedural, narrative and choice-driven game played through a first-person view, with a cast of supporting characters and an awesome original soundtrack.

I worked 12 months with the team: I joined them from start of production to release, took part in polishing all characters, all UIs and some environments.

Road 96 released Aug. 2021 on PC & Switch. Here's the steam page.

Strong narrative, a superb cast of characters, one of the year's best soundtracks and a unique procedurally-generated approach

Kyle LeClair, Hardcore Gamer

Hitchhike Your Way

Playing Road 96 is going on a road-trip that is in fact a teenage runaway from an oppressive country. People you meet are the highlight of the journey, situations are worthy of genre movies, and the soundtrack is everpresent.

I first worked on a visual target concept, to propose an engaging graphic style that would support the project special features, taping from graphical novels and pulp comics, misfits characters in harsh wastelands.

early paintover I did at the start of production

A very nice artistic direction and a soundtrack perfectly in tune.

Alexis Mariel Zema, jeuxvideo.com

roadtrippin with contrasting folks

Risky Encounters

We designed 8 supporting characters with intertwined stories, that would embark the player in different stories. Cohen brothers syle humor, Tarantino action, emotionnal recomposed family, coming of age struggle... These VIPs are the recurring characters, the true stars of Road 96.

lineup of the 8 VIPS and the modular, minor other characters

We also designed filler characters, with modularity in mind : teens, adults, cops. They have one-off roles, are used for crowds, etc.

equally inspired by americana and japanese anime

A Procedural Road Trip

The game is a succession of scenes, chosen based on player actions. The pool had to be large enough to be meaningful, so we crafted more than 40 unique scenes. In addition, to reflect the player progression accross the country and towards the mountains, they were 4 versions for each scene (desert/mountain, day/night). We also had specific variants to reflect time passed and previous player choices.

the 4 variants of the gas station scene
Welcome to Petria

90s dystopia

It's summer 1996 in a fictional country abused by a totalitarian state, managed by a repressive law force, and elections are looming. Welcome to Petria!

We conceived a whole country, experienced from intermittent but cohesive scenes of a road trip crossing the state from south to north. Go through americana landscapes, ill maintained trucker pubs or vandalized abandonned gas pipelines.

Detailed-rich road trips with each pit-stop and location having their own unique charm.

Giancarlo Saldana, Game Pressure

Political Posters

Posters in Petria are everywhere. We wanted to create a tense politcal atmsophere, escalating from election preparations to country riot.

Posters
Maybe call a cab?

A musical road trip

I designed unique audio tapes for the ingame collectibles. Each one has a corresponding soundtrack. Check out the eclectic but awesome full OST on youtube (with clips!!).

Each soundtrack has a corresponding tape, lootable and playable in game
worldmap

Grunge, Pop, Comics

The UI portrays who you are: a runaway teen, fighting for freedom of thought. Its style is inspried by bumper stickers, VHS tapes and traveler embroidered badges. Smells like teen spirit.

a collection of game HUDs, menus, popups and achievements icons
will you take Jarod's cab?

Thanks for reading. You now have a broad view of my work on this project. I hope you'll enjoy the story and world we created.

Steam page