Pup Up!
Chaotic Sandbox Game
My Role
Art Director, Solo Game Designer & Developer
Tools
Unity (C#), Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, InDesign), Procreate
Year
2025
Small dog. Big problems.
In Pup Up! You're a mischievous puppy who can interact with (pretty much) everything. Where causing chaos makes you grow, unlocking new areas and new ways to mess around. The more you interact, the faster you grow; the faster you grow, the more dangerous you become to your unsuspecting neighborhood.
Here you can see a bit behind the scenes of the concept and creative journal development.
The process behind it
Ideation and sketches
First sketches and brainstorming were done on paper; this process was mostly to note down all the ideas and then refine them into the final concept. Some highlights were the long Action lists and potential for the human characters.
2.5D Worldbuilding
For this project I decided to go for a 2.5D perspective to challenge the convention of physics based chaotic sandboxes being primarily in 3D. This resulted challenging when it came to changing the placeholder visual assets, to match the world scale and camera angle.
Game logics and flows
For this game I developed a game logic that considers the player's actions, scale and the objects, calculating how many "points" or scale it would award the player, a future idea is to have a "rush" or "bonus" mode where these points would be multiplied.
Props and character design
Designed various props for different objects "levels" or sizes and interactions. e.g. Interacting with the fridge gives you food items, biting furniture makes it look damaged, etc.
The outcome
A responsive, escalating sandbox prototype and creative journal documenting the creative thought process, reference study, props and character design and game/level design logic.
