Inspiration behind the environment props of Treble Thieves

By Walker Arand

The game takes place in a mansion owned by the ultra-wealthy Cliff Brasso, a man who uses his wealth to fill his home with artifacts he has stolen from around the world. Naturally, the furniture in his mansion would also be considerably pricey with lavish dining chair sets, side tables, water features, and oversized cakes to feed an entire party.

When creating the furniture, we took inspiration from luxury furniture that fit the period the game is set in. Luxury furniture brands that sell products in the Art Deco style were a good reference as they varied from classy to gaudy - both of which fit a man like Cliff Brasso well. We took heavy inspiration from The Great Gatsby film when designing the manor, integrating the Art Deco style into everything in the environment. Environment assets take the Art Deco design elements like sharp angles, streamlined forms, and stepped pyramids and exaggerate them into wonky proportions. These characteristics in the assets help steer away from realism and towards a cartoonish atmosphere. Around the time setting of The Great Gatsby, archeologists were uncovering ancient Egyptian ruins which not only inspired elements of Art Deco design but also inspired us to incorporate ancient Egyptian styles into our game.

Gatsby’s mansion does a good job showing how Art Deco was used to stylize a space.

Ancient Egyptian ruins were the main places that were being looted during the games historical setting, hence why many of our artifact models are inspired by real life ancient Egyptian relics. Many of the artifacts that the players can potentially take are ones found in tombs like crowns, arched harps, pottery, etc. These are affected by our art direction by incorporating brighter colors and exaggerated dimensions. This allows the artifacts to fit into the games style and make them stand out to the player.

Artifact assets inspired by ancient Egyptian relics: a flute, a harp, a pot, a necklace, and a crown.

We were originally going to have more Egyptian architecture in the layout of the manor to indicate that Cliff Brasso has designed his home in the style of cultures he has stolen from. However, this was later cut as it made the environment feel more like a museum than a wealthy person's lavish home. Instead, we changed this so that the environment resembled a manor but kept the ancient Egyptian inspired furniture models.

Previous version of the level that too closely resembled a museum

Newest version of the level that better resembles a lavish home

While sticking to our established style guide, we were able to create props to give more character to the rooms of our level making it seem like there are actually people living in this space. We took established styles and reworked them into our style guide to make something more cartoonish and unique.