We'll be using an area I made recently as our example.

Concepting

So, I first start as most do, with an idea and some concept art.

Shadow City Concept Art:

This was made on 5/2/25 at around 8-9 PM.

This helps get a good feel for the area, along with NPCs and the reason you're there. In this case, it serves as a optional area you can explore for some Charms and worldbuilding.

You can also join and double cross the mafia...

Inspiration

Also like most, I like to have some inspiration when making a character, song, game, or location.

In Shadow City's case, it was heavily inspired by the Pale City from Little Nightmares II. Take a look art some screenshots from my playthrough:

See what I mean? This cold, dark and depressing city serves as a great starting point for Shadow City.

Other inspirations include Referenceville from GUIDANCE, and The Gaslight District.

Art Assets and Level Design

Art assets are very easy to make, it's just level design that takes a while.

I start by making all the assets I need for the location (obviously) and then use said assets to make the area.

Have some WIP images I got during the creation of these assets. One is a old streetlamp sprite and the other is meant to be one of those sewer-ladder-thingys.

Here's a old VS new for the lamp sprite. Not including the first ever version because it was never used in-game.

A very good improvement if I do say so myself.\

(there are light edits to the new sprite as of now, just not showing them because i'm lazy)

The lamps were inspired by the lamps in The Gaslight District:

Great show. Highly recommend it.

And now for my favorite part! Level design! It's so fun to just put in some good music, YT video essay or podcast and grind out some rooms.

Here are some sneak peeks of a couple rooms!

Not sure what the deal is with the image texture, but oh well.

And that's my creative process! From inspiration to gameplay!

This is kind of weird, but I challenge YOU to make a post like this one. I wanna know how ya'll come up with these crackhead ideas!

May God bless all of you and I'll see ya soon!

-LinkIncGames

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