Shardbound Environments — Josh Nadelberg

The environments for Shardbound were tricky buggers. The game was a hex based tactical CCG, so board clarity was incredibly important. At the same time, we wanted these environments to feel natural and immersive. Designing around some complicated technical requirements like being able to alter the map layout and manipulate the terrain made this a tricky puzzle to solve.

I was fortunate to work with some amazingly creative artists on this stuff, who rally embraced these constraints and limitations. At the end of the day we found a look that's appealing and stylized, and allows the units and the gameplay to read clearly without getting distracting.

Below you'll find the 2 maps we implemented in Unreal, along with their corresponding concept art, some additional map designs for other biomes, and a bunch of exploratory visual development work.

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