Turnip Boy Robs a Bank

Turnip Boy is back!  This time, he’s teaming up with the fearsome Pickled Gang to plan and execute the weirdest heist of all time.  Shake down hostages, steal precious valuables, battle the fuzz, and use wacky tools bought off the dark web to move further into the vaults of the Botanical Bank.

Creative Direction

Because of the success of Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, I was brought on full-time as Creative Director for this project.  I helped lead the initial project timeline, budgeting, documentation, and consulted on publisher contracts.

I continued to help lead the narrative design of the game, hoping to bring the silly nature of the first game but leaning more into the mafia drama, and working closely with our art lead to ensure a smooth transition from game one to game two!

UI/UX

I'm very passionate about user interfaces, especially when they look like things that could belong in the actual game space.  A big focus of Turnip Boy Robs a Bank was to make the UI feel like technology that Turnip Boy was interacting with.  One of the biggest inspirations for this was Spy Kids toys you would see in the early 2000s.  I created guides for how these screens would flow, then made the art assets for them.  It was a unique challenge to make each of the "apps" on Turnip Boy's phone intuitive to the player.

Pixel Art and Marketing

For this game, I worked much more on the pixel art.  We were leaning towards a full-pixel art style rather than a vector/pixel hybrid.  I worked on a ton of characters, environments, props, UI, bosses, enemies, the works!  I also learned a lot more about animation and had a blast creating animations for enemies and bosses alike.

I continued supporting the marketing side by creating promotional art and steam assets, creating mock-ups for cinematics and trailers, and working on merchandise design for TBRAB. 

Narrative

As our dev cycle approached its end, I took on the responsibility of writing the majority of this game!  Because of tight deadlines, I wrote most of the game in two weeks! I was happy that the plot resonated with the Turnip Boy community, and people got some good laughs.  This time around, we were very inspired by mafia or heist movies like Oceans 11.

Level and Boss Design

I jumped even further into the design side of this game, working on the flow of major levels, as well as the design and mechanics for bosses and enemies in collaboration with our lead programmer and studio director.  I helped design four of the game's major bosses, spanning art and mechanics.

Results

For this game, we had a larger team, all incredible masters of their craft!  Games are a love letter to the people who work on them, and this game is a testament to the incredible talent of those who worked on it.  We launched multi-platform with 1.8K overwhelmingly positive on Steam!

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