Splash Art
Environment Art
Oirbo is set onboard a spaceship, the ESS Unity. As the humans rest suspended in hyper-sleep, the robots on board keep the ship running. Now that a rogue AI has begun to infiltrate the systems, the ship is falling into disrepair, and dangers lie in every corridor! The environments are built to guide the player seamlessly around a varied spaceship with multiple distinctive areas. Animations and environmental storytelling give the player a sense of the world without a single line of text in the entire game.
These signs help guide the player
Shadows under platforms increase visibility
The Central tree of the Greenhouse
An animated sign helping with a puzzle
Signs give locale context
Glass shaders distort backgrounds effectively
What could be in that tank?
The Shop Editor View
The medical Bay Overview
These towers are filled with people!
A surgery pod in the Med Bay
Some panel details in the Medical Bay
A save point surrounded by X-Rays of the Character
Hammers are a hazard
Waterfalls of lava!
These signs warn about the cogs
Lava waterfalls fill vertical sections effectively
Piles of Dead Oirbo's warn of Danger
Pile Variation
Character Design
The characters in Oirbo are all built on the ship so share a lot of similar design cues. All the bots are meant to be friendly, but over time neglect has led to some unintended errors and now some are hostile!
Oirbo! The main character
The Anaesthesiologist
BeeBot
Lava Bomber
Cargo Overseer
Giant Oirbo
Engineer
Mine
MiniRobo
Scythe Bot
Surgeon
A game without text
Oirbo does not have a single line of text in the entire game from start to finish. Only the end credits have words. With that the game presents a challenge, how do we communicate with the player? Using not only strong environmental storytelling, we developed an emoji based language system that universally communicates concepts to the player without them having to read. This helps immerse the player in a robotic, language-less world, but also helps us with localisation, making the game truly universal.
The Sprites in the visual Language
A sign found in-game
Animated to show the player more context
Animations of the button help tell the player what to look for
