In 2017, Konami asked our team to work on a mobile version of the amazing Castlevania series game, Symphony of the Night.
I was very excited because I played this game a lot at the time on my PS1.
It was also a real challenge because we had to have a completely new interface, designed for mobile devices and we wanted to keep it as close to the original version. So here’s how we did it.
So basically, we first needed to know how many screens we needed to design. There are many different menus in the game, including the main menu and the pause menu.
The main menu displays all options such as loading/saving files, settings and achievements.
There is also the pause menu, when you are in the game, which allows the player to change weapons, spells, pets…
And of course, to make the game more comfortable for players, all interfaces must change if a controller is detected.
Once I knew how many screens I had to work on, I had to define all the elements that would eventually build the interface.
I wanted to be as close to the original art direction, so I tweaked some elements of the game itself to create all of my items and objects.
I also needed to create multiple background images.
So when you put it all together, you get a pretty cool interface. As you can see, it’s very close to the artistic direction of the original game!
Making a nice HUD
The other aspect to take into account when working on a port is the HUD. Everything needs to be rearranged so that it is comfortable for the player and easy to use.
I’m not a very good pixel artist, certainly not. But our lead artist Simon Perin is an incredible pixel creator! So I asked him to make some pretty buttons for the HUD and here is the result.
Bonus:I also created a description document to both help the developer and explain my intentions to the Konami team.
Working on this kind of project is really awesome. Firstly because I am a fan of the Castlevania games and in particular of this title, then because there is great satisfaction in being able to contribute to this game by giving new life to such an important work in the gaming universe video. It was very satisfying and I hope to have the opportunity to work on such cool games again.