Happy Inside the Box: The Art of “Old Man’s Journey”

“Old Man’s Journey” is a puzzle adventure featuring an absorbing, emotional narrative, the life story of an old man uncovered through beautiful vignettes of his memories. The game puts experience before gameplay and takes players on a journey through serene, hand crafted environments in a whimsical sun-kissed world. Using the triforce of games they like to make, games they are able to make and games that currently have a market, helped the team at Broken Rules define clear goals and constraints for development. They embraced these rules as a box they had to think inside of and it shaped the game’s design as much as its art direction. Hear how this box made decisions easier and helped them build a 2D hand drawn art style that speaks to a broad demographic of players, stands out of the crowd and is still clearly readable for their puzzle gameplay. Clemens Scott of Broken Rules will also share how they setup their art pipeline to efficiently produce sharp drawings for different aspect ratios and resolutions ranging from 4K monitors to iPhone sized screens.

Clemens Scott
visual lead at Broken Rules

Clemens Scott is one of five co-founders of the Vienna based game studio Broken Rules. He is the studios’ visual lead and currently works on their upcoming project “Old Man’s Journey” as creative director and lead artist. Even though Clemens comes from the visual side of game development he evolved into a typical generalist in the past seven years, there is hardly a field in game development he hasn’t previously worked in.