Cryptid Taxi

Cryptid Taxi puts the player in the shoes of a taxi driver who takes up late-night shifts to earn enough money to buy a monster truck. There is a catch, though: The night shift consists of picking up various cryptids. These cryptids range from Texas-based to around the world, and they have all strangely gathered in this small town in Texas.

Cryptid Taxi was a group-based game consisting of six people.

UI/UX

What Did I Do?

For Cryptid Taxi I was in charge of UI/UX and Concept Art

Concept Art

Breakdown

For Cryptid Taxi I was tasked with Concept art for some Crytpids. I was tasked with making two character designs for two types of Cryptids: Wendigo and Skinwalker.

I based these two designs on the urban legends themselves and also some inspirations from the web.

Wendigo Concept Art

After those concepts, we decided to settle on a more carefree vibe to the game and create characters that resemble everyday people.

The previous concepts were scratched completely and I started working on three other characters of the game. For these characters, I researched their backgrounds/lore and tried to connect them to different types of people.

Lake Worth Monster Concept Art

Alien Concept Art

UI Spreadsheet

I immediately started coming up with concepts for the Main Menu and different types of Setting menus. I sketched a quick concept for the main menu, which would later be turned into an image.

Main Menu Concept

Main Menu In-Game

As for the Settings, I came up with the idea of making a journal as my base. The taxi driver in-game has a taxi driver journal that he would look into to learn about the cryptid’s preferences. This was kind of scratched towards the end of the game, but we still kept the journal UI.

Overall, the Settings and Control menus ended up referencing this aspect of the game.

Settings Concept Art

Settings In-Game

Controls In-Game

Second Credits Concept

First Credits In-Game

Pause Menu In-Game

Radio Concept Art

Radio In-Game

Air Freshener In-Game

Logo Color Concepts

Final Logo Design

Wendigo Concept Art

Squonk Concept Art

UI/UX

Down the line, I was tasked with doing the main UI/UX. This is where I spent the rest of my time for the duration of the project.

For all UI assets in the game, I mainly used Procreate for concepts and Photoshop to create the actual UI Assets. I also used Illustrator for some assets in the game.

The credits stuck with the same concept of the journal, but I made them more dynamic than the Settings.

I decided to base the credits inside the taxi car itself. The driver would look over to the seat and pick up the paper and the taxi journal itself.

Here I put my team members on the first slide, professor/TA’s on the second, and extra credits on the last one.

First Credits Concept

Second Credits In-Game

Third Credits In-Game

The Hud menu for the game consists of a patience meter, profile icon, money icon, map, and car stats.

The HUD was modified from the OG Concept, with the addition of the car stats and setup.

HUD Concept Art

HUD In-Game

The pause menu was inspired by one of my team member’s concept art. I took their concept and made separate charms for each button shown in the pause menu.

Pause Menu Concept Art

(Kasey Wilkinson)

There are two cryptid preferences in-game that require visuals to communicate well with the player. Those would be the air fresheners and radio preferences.

I created the radio design based on car radio references. The air fresheners were based on your stereotypical tree air freshener. I also ended up animating the air fresheners to pop up when the player clicks and hovers over them.

Cryptid Taxi’s logo was something I left to last since I could not figure out what a good logo for the game would be. I experimented with concept art for a while before finally coming up with a design I liked.

The logo is based on the skull structure of a goat but with the addition of fangs and horns. I also made it so that it would border the text. The text itself was made by going with the flow of the skull shape and I ended up coming with some type of rock band font. Not mad with the results though.