Gwen’s Getaway

The category problem was the starting point. Most puzzle-decoration games in this space share a glossy, plastic-feeling character aesthetic. It’s a safe look, but it makes the work harder to distinguish. I wanted Gwen’s Getaway to feel handmade and lived-in instead, with characters and environments that carried more personality than the typical mobile decoration title.

The direction I set was a stylised painterly aesthetic with stronger brush-stroke shadows and highlights, drawing on references like Arcane and a handful of others. Nothing pushed into illustration territory or anything that risked alienating the casual mobile audience, but enough to give the world and characters real warmth and texture. The animation style flowed from the same principle: stylised motion that felt like part of a story, not a UI flourish.

The FTUE introduction film is the other piece worth calling out. I was given the task with very little lead time, so I directed it as a series of animated stills with strong cinematography and a clear narrative beat. The constraint became the aesthetic choice. Animated stills carried more emotional weight than fully animated motion would have in the same window, and the style now reads as deliberate rather than budget-driven.

Although the game was later discontinued, the work itself was the kind of full-lifecycle brand build that doesn’t come around often. Concept to live development, brand system to FTUE direction, internal team to external partners, all under one creative vision.