At a Glance

Design and development of an interactive show floor map for Japan’s largest independent game development festival BitSummit.

In Detail

In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 the industry-leading game show BitSummit was cancelled. Instead the festival organizers decided to offer an online streaming event.

With over 17,000 attendees filling the halls of Kyoto’s Miyako Messe convention center [in 2019], it was BitSummit’s largest gathering yet. Founded in late-2012, BitSummit is a pioneering and innovative gaming event unlike any other, paving the way for global exposure of Japanese independent developers, resulting in greater distribution and success in Western markets than ever before. In six years, BitSummit has established itself as Japan’s leading indie games festival, growing year after year since its humble beginnings as an industry-only gathering, and blooming into Japan’s second-largest annual gaming event.
The event is expected to continue growing in 2020, with over 100 game developers and publishers from both Japan and abroad showcasing their latest works. Attendance has grown year over year and is expected to reach 20,000 visitors […] – BitSummit

As part of this year’s online-only event we designed, animated and developed an interactive show floor map. The map links to all games from the BitSummit Official Selection divided in groups as well as a few sponsors. The map features 5 main continents and teams inspired by classic game genres, Japanese superheroes and monsters. Each continent features an iconic character such as the BitRobot, BitRaider, BitSamurai, BitRanger and BitKaiju.
The background for the map was the concept of the Pangaean supercontinent. It serves as a metaphor that we are all connected and have the same roots in a time when social distancing is the norm.

Adorned with animations that align with game genres and our sponsors, this map will be the center of our website and act as a first interaction before digging deeper into all content of BitSummit Gaiden.

Web Design &
Development Tasks

• Concept design for map illustrations & style guide.
• In-detail illustrations of continent map and characters.
• Storytelling and animation concepts.
• Keyframe illustrations and After Effects animation.
• Responsive web development in HTML5, CSS3 and Vue.js
• Animation integration in high quality vector/SVG format.
• UI/UX design and interaction design prototyping.
• SEO & social media enhancements and server integration.
• Cross-browser and cross-device testing.

Graphic Design, Illustration & UI/UX Design

Animation Keyframe Illustrations

Animations

Screencast

Experience the full interactive map from here:
https://bentographics.com/projects/bitsummit/

We first approached Bento Graphics with our project not knowing the full scope of what we would need and having very tight deadlines, all thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Their team was really flexible and helped guide us through the entire process. Overall, we’re really happy with the outcome! The virtual map they created for our event is amazing and really helped us stand apart from some other events happening online.
– John Davis, BitSummit Organization Committee