Placebo Entertainment
An indie studio founded, funded, and developed by Bradley students. Over the summer, 18 of us worked part-time to complete our game, Beyond the Marion. I was a UX Designer on the project.
01.
Introduction
Placebo Entertainment LLC is a company made by Bradley students. Our game, Beyond the Marion, was developed over three months in summer 2024.
We wanted to challenge ourselves to complete a project, try new things, and push our talents, all outside the bounds of school and work. Beyond the Marion is a first person walking simulator and puzzle game set on an alien spaceship trapped in a time loop.
02.
About the Project
Internships, especially in the creative field, are hard to come by. So, a Bradley student decided to make her own opportunities and open a game studio.
I was approached by the founder of the company (and my dear friend) to see if I was interested in the project. Even though I was already working a full time internship, I wanted to continue to challenge myself as a designer. Besides my own goals, who could say no to working on a project with incredibly talented, hard working friends? It just sounded fun, and I applied and got in.
After a lot of early discussion and debate, we decided on the theme of our game: an alien adventure with a time-travel twist.
03.
Challenges
I was going to be working on an interdisciplinary project, the likes of which I had never worked on before. This project presented many exciting challenges, including:
1. Time & Resource Constraints. We only had three months to make the game, which is an incredibly quick turnaround from concept to complete. On top of that, everyone involved in the project had full time jobs. So, we were limited to working part time in the evenings.
2. Cross Disciplinary Work. I was working alongside programmers, producers, 3D artists, game designers, and one other UXer. Each person had a different skill to bring to the table, different needs that needed to be met, and different ways of communicating. At the beginning of the project, it was hard to get everyone on the same page and develop an efficient workflow.
3. A Whole New World. I’ve worked on small scale FUSE games for my university, nonprofit websites, and apps. I have never worked in an indie studio, and I’ve certainly never worked on a full game before. The workflow wasn’t something I had experienced before, so I had to really adjust how I designed.
04.
The Process
My official role on the team was “UX Designer”. But I was working on a small team, and I got to contribute in many different ways outside of designing.
My first priority was to focus on the company side. If anyone was going to play our eventual game, we needed a place to get the word out. I was trusted with a lot of branding and development. I worked primarily in Figma to design a website for Placebo Entertainment, which I passed off to our solo HTML coder. I also worked in Illustrator to create our company logo, iterating it until I got approval from our producer.
When the website was workable, I started to work on in-game designs. I worked alongside the art team to come up with a design guideline. I worked on selecting fonts, colors, and made in-universe logos. I also worked on figuring out how dialogue UI would function. We decided we wanted a retro futuristic, 1970s kind of feeling to the game. I was heavily inspired by vintage motel signs. I even created a custom font in Illustrator for our in universe alien language.
Aside from design, we also needed a lot of 2D to populate the world. Since our 3D artists were busy, I took it upon myself to make posters, paintings, and the illustrations for the game’s opening sequence. So, the first thing you see in the game was made by me, which is pretty cool. We also didn’t have a dedicated writer, so I worked alongside the game design team to craft dialogue for the characters. I felt like a script editor in Hollywood, and it was super fun to help the game come to life that way.
05.
Results
Through months of hard work, we were miraculously able to complete the game. The game has been released to itch.io and Steam, and has received favorable reviews. But, it isn’t really about the end product. We created our own company, we worked hard just to grow our skills and try new things. I learned so much about how I work, how I communicate, and how I can solve design problems. The project is something remarkable, and I am incredibly proud of the work the entire team did. Check out the company website and play the game here.
01. Introduction
Placebo Entertainment LLC is a company made by Bradley students. Our game, Beyond the Marion, was developed over three months in summer 2024.
We wanted to challenge ourselves to complete a project, try new things, and push our talents, all outside the bounds of school and work. Beyond the Marion is a first person walking simulator and puzzle game set on an alien spaceship trapped in a time loop.
02. About the Project
Internships, especially in the creative field, are hard to come by. So, a Bradley student decided to make her own opportunities and open a game studio.
I was approached by the founder of the company (and my dear friend) to see if I was interested in the project. Even though I was already working a full time internship, I wanted to continue to challenge myself as a designer. Besides my own goals, who could say no to working on a project with incredibly talented, hard working friends? It just sounded fun, and I applied and got in.
After a lot of early discussion and debate, we decided on the theme of our game: an alien adventure with a time-travel twist.
03. Challenges
I was going to be working on an interdisciplinary project, the likes of which I had never worked on before. This project presented many exciting challenges throughout the process, including:
1. Time & Resource Constraints. We only had three months to make the game, which is an incredibly quick turnaround from concept to complete. On top of that, everyone involved in the project (myself included) had full time jobs. So, we were limited to working part time in the evenings.
2. Cross Disciplinary Work. I was working alongside programmers, producers, 3D artists, game designers, and one other UXer. Each person had a different skill to bring to the table, different needs that needed to be met, and different ways of communicating. At the beginning of the project, it was hard to get everyone on the same page and develop an efficient workflow.
3. A Whole New World. I’ve worked on small scale FUSE games for my university, nonprofit websites, and apps. I have never worked in an indie studio, and I’ve certainly never worked on a full game before. The workflow wasn’t something I had experienced before, so I had to really adjust how I designed.
04. The Process
My official role on the team was “UX Designer”. But I was working on a small team, and I got to contribute in many different ways outside of designing.
My first priority was to focus on the company side. If anyone was going to play our eventual game, we needed a place to get the word out. I was trusted with a lot of branding and development. I worked primarily in Figma to design a website for Placebo Entertainment, which I passed off to our solo HTML coder. I also worked in Illustrator to create our company logo, iterating it until I got approval from our producer.
When the website was workable, I started to work on in-game designs. I worked alongside the art team to come up with a design guideline. I worked on selecting fonts, colors, and made in-universe logos. I also worked on figuring out how dialogue UI would function. We decided we wanted a retro futuristic, 1970s kind of feeling to the game. I was heavily inspired by vintage motel signs. I even created a custom font in Illustrator for our in universe alien language.
Aside from design, we also needed a lot of 2D to populate the world. Since our 3D artists were busy, I took it upon myself to make posters, paintings, and the illustrations for the game’s opening sequence. So, the first thing you see in the game was made by me, which is pretty cool. We also didn’t have a dedicated writer, so I worked alongside the game design team to craft dialogue for the characters. I felt like a script editor in Hollywood, and it was super fun to help the game come to life that way.
05. Results
Through months of hard work, we were miraculously able to complete the game. The game has been released to itch.io and Steam, and has received favorable reviews. But, it isn’t really about the end product. We created our own company, we worked hard just to grow our skills and try new things. I learned so much about how I work, how I communicate, and how I can solve design problems. The project is something remarkable, and I am incredibly proud of the work the entire team did. Check out the company website and play the game here.
