Art research:

Extensive research was done to define the art style. As a result, we were able to create an art bible to guide the artistic direction. 

Color restrictions

We have established specific color limitations for both the environment and characters to prioritize readability.
Characters and VFX are highly saturated, while the environment is slightly darker and less saturated to maintain contrast.

Shapes

We defined the shape language to ensure consistency with the character and camera angles. To ensure consistency with the character and camera angles, we have defined a specific shape language. All shapes have a rounded silhouette and modified proportions, resulting in a cosy and cartoonish feel throughout the game. 

Some initial prototyping has been done on assets and sharers to better understand the art style and accurately replicate it.

Programming research:

Engines

Unreal Engine 5 was a very appealing engine to use, it looked easy to use and fast to prototype in. But the first week in and we already hit a big bump. We couldn't find out how to get "local multiplayer" to work. We still continued developing our core mechanics in Unreal Engine and hoped we could fix it later.  But that wasn't the case, we finally decided to switch to Unity and start making out prototypes in there, which lead to a major fallback in development, but we already have a vision of how out mechanics will play out.

Unity vs UE5

As it turns out, a lot of Unreal Engine's built-in tools doesn't give us that much of an advantage. Because Unity has its "more advanced" tools hidden away in the package manager. Which means that most tools we wanted to use in Unreal Engine are also available in Unity.