TYKO
& DOGBEE
VIDEO GAME PROTOTYPE
CREATOR / GAME DESIGNER
INTERNAL
SUMMARY
Tyko & DogBee is a narrative-driven exploration game set in the vertical city of Illum, a light-powered world warped by interdimensional mass tourism. You play as Tyko, a young guide navigating absurd, non-lethal crowd management and environmental puzzles, assisted by DogBee—a flying companion. Progress revolves around navigating and removing The Gloom, a creeping dark mist that obscures space, blocks routes, and drains light, making it both a core gameplay system and a visual navigation layer.
Currently rewriting and updating the core concept, world, characters, and narrative arc, and defining the high-level gameplay structure. Light vs Gloom dynamic, the “tourist” systems, living infrastructure creatures called Solins, and the central antagonist driving the city of Illum’s decay.
TYPE
Video Game
Narrative Experience
With a little light and courage,
the dark isn’t so scary after all.
WHAT I DID/DO
CREATIVE DIRECTION
ART DIRECTION
NARRATIVE DESIGN
USER EXPERIENCE
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT
WHAT’S NEXT
Updated GDD
Pitch Deck
Updated Assets
Vertical Slize
CREATING THE GAME
I challenged myself to create a narrative exploration game with a strong thematic identity while keeping the scope realistic for a small team. The project needed to balance whimsy with weight, avoid over-designed systems, and make abstract themes like loneliness, extraction, tourism, industrial growth legible through play rather than exposition. A key design risk was darkness: traditional “darkness as danger” conflicted with readability, tone, and art direction.
I approached the project from the outside in: theme first, then mechanics, then production constraints. The city of Illum was designed vertically to support clear progression and narrative escalation. Darkness was redefined as The Gloom, a navigable, readable mist that doubles as an art-direction tool and a player guidance system.
Mechanics were repeatedly reduced and recombined to ensure each system served multiple purposes: traversal, storytelling, and pacing. Narrative beats were embedded into level structure and environmental detail rather than cutscenes, and the design was continuously stress-tested against team size, budget, and production reality.
The result is a focused, coherent concept with a clear creative spine: a world where mechanics, visuals, and story reinforce each other. Tyko & DogBee demonstrates how a small, narrative-led game can communicate complex ideas through play, maintain a distinctive tone, and remain achievable to produce. The project now functions as a solid foundation for prototyping, pitching, and further development without creative or technical overreach.
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HIGH CONCEPT
ILLUM is a third-person narrative exploration game set in a vertical city built on the slope of a floating mountain, suspended above an endless sky ocean. The city survives on light and energy produced by a god-like entity—the God‑Solin—and distributed through a network of Mid‑Solins embedded in each district.
Decades ago, an interdimensional industrial entity known as CHURN possessed the city’s mayor and quietly began siphoning energy from the Solins. What was once a lush, radiant city has since entered a slow, normalized decline. As the game begins, that decline suddenly accelerates. The light dims further. Systems fail. Creatures become erratic. Tourists flood upward through the city, fleeing the dark.
The player steps into this moment of escalation.
THE WORLD
The universe of ILLUM is vast, quiet, and unsettling in a restrained way. Other cities can be seen far away on the horizon, each powered by its own God‑Solin. There is no travel between them, only distance, scale, and silence.
ILLUM itself is structured as a vertical city of plateaus, each district built on terraces along the mountainside. These plateaus allow for readable, semi‑open levels while reinforcing the city’s dependence on vertical movement, infrastructure, and energy flow.
Tonally, the world leans into ambient post‑cosmic horror, not through fear or violence, but through scale, inevitability, and absurd systems operating far beyond individual intent.
DISTRICTS & PROGRESSION
The city’s districts reflect their distance from the God‑Solin:
- Lower Districts are cold, dim, and industrial—Nordic functionalism mixed with worn brutalism. Light is scarce. Infrastructure dominates.
- Mid Districts grow warmer and denser, with layered housing, transit hubs, and failing public squares built around Mid‑Solins.
- Upper Districts were once lush and luxurious—Mediterranean, coastal, almost resort‑like. Now they are crowded, overheated, and choked by elite tourism and aggressive energy extraction.
Each district is connected by transport systems—trams, lifts, blimps, ladders, living creatures, improvised infrastructure—that only function when light and energy are restored. Healing Solins and reactivating generators opens new paths upward.
SOLINS, LIGHT & DECAY
The God‑Solin provides immense light and heat, but its reach naturally decays with distance. The Mid‑Solins were created to stabilize this system, ensuring the entire city could remain habitable.
CHURN’s intervention breaks this balance.
As the player saves districts and restores individual Solins, CHURN responds by increasing siphoning pressure on the remaining ones—adding more industrial pipes, harder‑to‑reach extraction points, and escalating environmental consequences in an attempt to maintain “100% efficiency.”
Progress does not stop the system—it exposes it.
CREATURES & TOURISTS
BEINGS OF LIGHT
ILLUM is inhabited by strange, glowing beings of all sizes—massive, tiny, and everything in between. These creatures roam the city erratically, driven nearly feral by the loss of light.
When illumination is low, they are unpredictable and potentially dangerous if the player is careless. When light returns, they calm, become curious, and sometimes even sing—especially when fed fruit of a color they favor.
They are not enemies in a traditional sense, but living indicators of the city’s health.
PESKY TOURISTS
Tourism is the city’s curse.
As the light fades, tourists migrate upward, seeking darker, more exclusive districts where CHURN’s siphoning has not yet fully collapsed the atmosphere. Each area introduces new classes of tourists—wealthier, stranger, and more demanding than the last.
They hate light, complain constantly, and unintentionally worsen the city’s condition through sheer volume and entitlement. Their movement patterns, density, and behaviors form environmental puzzles and systemic obstacles rather than combat encounters.
The higher you climb, the richer the tourists become—and the louder they protest the influx of those below them.
PLAYER ROLE
OUR HERO
Player Role
You play as Tyko, a young guide working in a city that no longer makes sense, accompanied by DogBee, a flying companion who retrieves and upgrades a mysterious glowing ball—later revealed to be far more than a tool.
Tyko does not fight the system head‑on. He navigates it, reroutes it, temporarily disrupts it, and slowly exposes its consequences.
The core gameplay focuses on:
- Exploration and spatial problem‑solving
- Restoring light through sabotage and re‑routing
- Managing creatures, tourists, and environmental systems
- Unlocking traversal by healing districts rather than defeating enemies
ART FROM THE PRODUCTION
WRAP UP
The most enjoyable project I’ve worked on in years because every decision feels meaningful, and I’m genuinely excited to see it through to the end, even if it takes a lifetime.