Gameplay Video
In game screenshots. From left to right: Title screen, Boss Battles for Levels 1-3, Game Over Screen, and Victory Screen.
Player Character Melanie movement sprites. Static idle, looping idle, smear frame + looping right movement, static death frame (badger detransition)
UI- A graze bar that fills as bullets graze past the player.
Inspiration taken from Phantom of the Opera gold theatrical set dressing. As another fun nod to the musical, I also referenced sheet music for the notes within the graze bar!
Scarlet/Letty Character sprite blinking.
Full body illustration for brief use during skill activation.
Character expression portraits. Top row, Melanie can be used in the health bar UI: a pained expression upon taking damage, a portrait when ability ready, and a portrait for death (badger detransition). Scarlet/Letty (bottom row) for narrative cutscenes.
Illustration: A panicked Melanie de-transformed into a normal badger for the Game Over screen.
Illustration: The reunited couple Melanie and Scarlet for the Victory screen.
Phantom of the Idol is a danmaku game created in the Unity Engine as a submission to Magical Girl Game Jam #12. The jam was hosted by Ran d'Reille from 08/09/25 to 09/08/25 on itch.io.
After the six themes were revealed, our team brainstormed for about a week, then pooled our ideas together to vote on ones that most excited all 7 of us. First, we realized several of us had submitted ideas featuring anthropomorphic magical girls/powers, inspired by the Snake Eater theme. Some members of the art team were excited to try making anthro/furry art, so the team decided to combine two themes: Phantom Pain & Snake Eater. We landed on a sapphic shoot-em up retelling of Phantom of the Opera, featuring anthropomorphic characters and Europop music.
Internally, we utilized a Trello board to help delegate & navigate tasks throughout the month. We also had a Miro space with different sections dedicated to different teams. I utilized the art section to collect my inspiration and reference options in one place. For example: on the Miro board, I was able to collect different color palettes and contrast them side by side in a public place in which the team could all deliberate in. After some tests, we selected a palette for the rest of the assets going forward. Miro was a great place for me to gather various inspiration on idol outfits, collect animal research into badgers & scarlet kingsnakes, and study original Touhou game sprites. This vast gathering and combining of different inspirations is one of my favorite parts of being an artist! Something inspired, yet still unique and new!
I am happy I got to make character portraits with different expressions, and will keep thinking of more creative, and funny, ways to use portraits along with health UI. I'm also excited my team was patient and helpful in teaching me more about setting up 2D animation in Unity. (We utilized GitHub for file management.) To conclude: I'm very thankful our Team Lead invited me to be a part of this team, and this project. I'd like to submit to more Magical Girl Game Jams in the future!
Thank you for reading.
A link to play the most recent build is here:
