The original Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age games were released back in 2001 and 2002 for the Game Boy Advance. Since then, those titles have yet to be remade or remastered. This project reimagines the game's UI elements and art within a quick, 40-second, battle screen example animation.
Tools Used:
Adobe Photoshop - Creating background art, sprites, and sprite animations.
Adobe Illustrator - Creating UI components and iconography.
Adobe After Effects - Building and rendering out the full video with animations.
Font Forge - Update to the characters "I" and J" in the font Taranis.
Figma - Mapping out the flow of the battle screen.
Fonts Used Within Project:
Taranis
For headers.
Tiempo
For body content and description strings.
League Spartan Bold
For damage number indicators.
All art and design is fully my own, apart from the official "Golden Sun" logo (on home page project card), and sound track and effects (included in video).
More sprites (apart from what is shown) for Isaac and Saturos featured in the video, which include attack, cast, and defend states.
Isaac
Garet
Ivan
Mia
Saturos (Boss)
In the video, the layout of the battle HUD is kept mostly true to the original games. Apart from all featured art assets receiving a remake, UI components and widgets are placed relative to their original locations.
Almost all features were kept with redesign, with some notable features added:
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Damage number indicators when characters are attacked. There are two states shown, for critical and normal attacks. Replaces the passive, narrative string text in the original games to feel more relevant to newer RPGs and immediate.
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Character shadows that move with their actions. This gives the environment a more active feel, and ties "flat" sprites within a realistically painted world.
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Pulsing UI replaces original fast-blinking UI widgets, creating smoother interactions that are no longer frantic.
More aspects of the game, such as the main menu, pause menu, and settings, will be added to the project in time.