Cardboard Chronicles

"Cardboard Chronicles" is a puzzle adventure game that is all about thinking inside the box. In a world made entirely of cardboard and doodles, you are the one who created it all. A child with nothing else to play with but some boxes and crayons gets spirited away into their imaginary world and becomes a doodle themselves! Smash and fling your way through puzzles as you help the strange characters you meet on the way to freeing yourself in Cardboard Chronicles!

For my graduate thesis project, our team of 13 developed a game for the Nintendo Switch over two semesters. As one of four artists, I took on the role of environment and prop artist, focusing on a visual style inspired by "Cardboard" and "Made by a kid" from our narrative. To achieve this, we kept the assets simple, with textures designed to look hand-crafted by a child. Before creating digital assets, we experimented by physically crafting with cardboard to better understand its layers, textures, and structural qualities.

Creating Materials and Assets:

I used Substance Designer to create cardboard materials and imported them into Unreal Engine, where I developed a master material with adjustable features like opacity, tiling, color depth, and tint to ensure visual consistency. I also created a separate master material for corrugated cardboard detailing on asset edges.

Since we were publishing on the Nintendo Switch, assets needed low polygon counts. For the town level, I created a modular building kit and a foliage package to maximize reusability. I also developed tileable textures for larger areas. Each asset was hand-painted in Substance Painter to achieve a childlike style, with the master cardboard material overlay adding texture variation. 

Level Design:

Cardboard Chronicles features five levels designed around strong player guidance and readable exploration. I helped block out the town layout, using environmental cues and a central bell tower landmark to orient players and reinforce progression as puzzles were completed.

A central bell tower acted as a visual landmark (“weenie”), allowing players to stay oriented at all times. The tower was intentionally framed and reintroduced as players progressed through puzzles, reinforcing spatial awareness and progression. Each location was designed to be visually distinct and easily readable while still encouraging curiosity and exploration along a largely linear path. 

After initial whiteboxing by the design team, I enhanced levels through modular environment art, creating reusable kits and props while optimizing textures and components to maintain performance across platforms.

Lighting, Optimization and others:

I handled lighting for all levels and final art optimizations. Most of the lighting was baked into the scene, and I applied post-processing to create a bright, colorful atmosphere.

I also created Steam page art assets, sprite sheet VFX, and the starting animation sequence using Unreal Engine’s Sequencer.