Mini Games: Games Inspired by popular game mechanics

The Rat City

A sketchy, chaotic game about dodging rats and authority.

Team: Akshita Jain, Xinyi Shen

My Role: Illustration & visual direction

Duration:42 hours

Tools: Photoshop, Unity, custom brushes

🗺️ Concept:

The city’s mayor has been overthrown—rats now rule the streets.
You’re just trying to get home… but you’ll need to outwit gangs of rats to do it. Watch your step.

🧩 Gameplay:

  • Side-scrolling obstacle dodging

  • Sketchy art style reflecting urban decay and paranoia

  • Rats act as unpredictable “guards” with shifting movement patterns

🎨 Visual Style:

  • Greyscale + dirty color overlays

  • Emphasis on expressive rat shapes, fog, and broken buildings

✍️ Design Note:

"This game was about capturing the vibe of chaos in a city with no rules—fast, surreal, and personal."

Burning Halo Blues

Individual project exploring survival in a metaphorical hell.

My Role: Game design, illustration, environment art.

Duration: 15 hours.

Tools: Unity, Photoshop

🗺️ Concept:

You’re an angel who crash-landed in a glitchy, burning underworld.
Survive long enough to escape with your halo intact—or risk becoming part of the system.

🧩 Gameplay:

  • Top-down survival and dodging mechanics

  • Timer-based score: the longer you survive, the more “corrupted” the world gets

  • Halo acts as a dynamic health meter that changes visually

🎨 Visual Style:

  • Neon-and-ash palette

  • Harsh angular environments and flickering sprites

✍️ Design Note:

"This was my experiment with emotional difficulty—not just physical challenge. The world corrupts as you hesitate."

The Grind Never Ends

A visual metaphor for burnout and endless systems.

My Role: Narrative design, visual development

Duration: 15 hours

Tools: Unity, Procreate

🗺️ Concept:

A game about being stuck in a loop.
Wake up. Work. Crash. Repeat. But can you spot when the game starts breaking down?

🧩 Gameplay:

  • Endless side-scrolling with increasing visual noise

  • Repetitive tasks (jump, dodge, collect) slowly lose meaning

  • Background begins to glitch, objects repeat imperfectly

🎨 Visual Style:

  • Harsh reds and greys, monochrome figures

  • Characters lack faces—just shadows in motion

✍️ Design Note:

“This was built as a playable journal entry. It loops because that’s how burnout feels—until it breaks.”

Reflection

Across these prototypes, I focused on rapid, narrative-driven experimentation—each game was built in under two days to test how simple mechanics could express mood, metaphor, and tension. By pairing distinct visual styles with emotional hooks, I explored how even quick sketches can carry meaning. These games taught me how to prioritize clarity, iterate fast, and design with intention, even under tight creative constraints.