Man Please Last 10 Seconds was mainly inspired by I Wanna Be The Boshy, a game that requires quick reflexes to dodge harmful bullets while leaving space for yourself to shoot enemies. We decided to the take away the portion of attacking enemies or a boss because the prompt given to us was "a game that lasts 10 seconds". Our desire for "neo-tokyo"-esque aesthetics was the main drive for the look of this game because we were both heavily inspired by it. In fact, it was the first things we thought of after brainstorming what kind of game we wanted to make. And so we were pushed towards a neo-tokyo, pixel-style game, envisioning the background to look like this:

When we took these ideas, a dodging game inside a neo-tokyo world, to our professor, we began to focus more on the mechanics and lessoned the workload the neo-tokyo style aesthetic may have brought, changing it to be a sort of training simulation where the player would have to dodge bullets shooting from training bots.

The way the bullets were spawned was greatly inspired by Touhou [on a less grander scale]:

The goal for our art direction then was to have a common color that represented the "simulated' world. Michelle chose a pale blue for this purpose while chosing a darker and striking red-orange color for the bullets the player had to dodge. While the player heavily contrasted with the background:

[First sketch of player]

[End Result - Idle animation]

[Stage Background, Inspired by the "WarioWare , Inc" stage in Super Smash Bros. coupled with the "training rooms with grid lines" - theme in Street Fight V and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate]

["WarioWare , Inc" stage]

["Street Fighter V"]

["Super Smash Bros. Ultimate"]