Mortal Kombat Onslaught
My with Mortal Kombat Onslaught involvement on the game was only during pre-production, I explored menu flows, style guides, and bold (and bloody) concepts for celebrations. With Onslaught now available, you can check it out yourself and see my fingerprints all over the final product!
Gacha Concepts
The previous Mortal Kombat mobile game had a very tame gacha sequence involving card packs opening. But for MK: Onslaught the goal was to nail the vicious and brutal world of Mortal Kombat. My storyboard idea for the Soul Chamber is what won out among the other ideas offered. Taking complete ownership I started to direct my vision and bring it to life through After Effects.
Gacha Storyboards
Many immediately jumped into digital software to communicate their ideas, but I purposefully took a more traditional approach by drawing storyboards. This method prevented me from getting lost in details or confused how to pull it off. I simply grabbed art references to express my idea and sketched out the sequence. While the ideas in the gallery below didn’t make the cut, they still perfectly encapsulate my vision for the gacha sequence: dark and twisted like the infamous Fatalities the game series is know for.
Style Tile Concepts
With gameplay still in development the UI team started experimenting with different visual treatments for the Frontend. We first created mood boards and then executed on the concept by designing two faux menus: a character and mission selection. The rationale behind this was to gauge if the proposed designs held up on “simple” and “complex” menus.
“Blood Seal”
The concept behind this style tile is game fiction I imagined: an evil emperor uses the blood of his enemies as ink for his royal seal. Dried blood and ragged artifacts left from ink seals were my touchstones.
Character Selection
Mission Selection
“Charnel Tome”
This style tile also was inspired by dreamed up game fiction: the quest of a Necronomicon-like tome that could raise up legions of the undead. While many think of Evil Dead’s fleshy Book of the Dead, I wanted to make something more that was Necronomicon meets Grail Diary.
Character Selection
Mission Selection
Character Edit
Adobe XD prototype: Character Edit
One of the most important (and complex) screens in a character collector games is the Character Edit menu. Not only is it a conduit for multiple gameplay functions, it’s also showcases the cool heroes and villains the player collects.
Character Edit’s “Soul Bind” interaction
3D Panorama Concepts
A design challenge that I worked with the Art Director was trying to explore ways to “plus” the Character Edit screen’s 3D panorama. I pitched the idea of having unique events occur on the set number of environments associated to the characters. Gruesome flourishes that randomly trigger after a period of time, reminding the player of the universe they are in.
