Greetings, interns!
We're only 3 days out from launch, so we figured it’s finally time for a page-one feature on one of the game's best features - the strange and wonderful beings that populate Times & Galaxy’s Dorp System!
Where did they come from, in terms of both narrative plotting and visual design? Only creative director Ben Gelinas and character artist Bridget Gibson know for sure, but they were kind enough to share some insights.
XEEL
The xeel are easily the most technologically advanced of the Dorp System’s inhabitants. This is because they’re not from Dorp at all. The highly intelligent goo-species were cruising through the cosmos when their ship broke down, stranding them here. But they’ve made the best of it, repurposing their ship into the governmental hub of Central Station and sharing their technology with the other sentient beings around Dorp. Are they looking to invade? Become galactic overlords or Benevolent Gods? If their leader Xeel Prime were more motivated, they might have mercilessly taken over the system. But however malicious their plans were, the xeel’s inability to get their own ship working again suggests that ruling with an iron fist might not be in the cards.
Xeel are, by far, the goopiest of all species in Times & Galaxy.
“The xeel, as a concept, were switching around the cliché in alien stories where the aliens had all this high tech, and then the humans find it and they grow,” Gelinas says. “In this case it's the high tech [ones] got stranded among all these less high-tech species, [and decide], ‘I guess we’re gonna lead them?’”
Using robotic bodies to house their gelatinous anatomies, the xeel cut a distinct figure among the species of Times & Galaxy: like a lava lamp piloting a tiny gundam. They were also the very first species designed by Gibson, who notes that they started with classic exploratory outfits, and tinkered with proportions for a unique outline.
“I was really keyed into this idea of having a recognizable silhouette,” Gibson explains. “The look that the xeel have is very much inspired by a normal space suit—blowing their proportions out a little bit—but the starting point for me being that retro-early space suit. Then walking that back to early diving suits.
“The chunky, mechanical situation that was happening there I found very inspiring,” they continue, of the xeel’s lava-lamp like frames. “I was just really excited about the idea of pushing something as far from our human ideas of bodies. Going from solid mass to plasma.”
HUMANIANS
The humans of Humania aren’t quite human. Gelinas notes that they aren't intended to our own past or future—they’re more a funhouse mirror version of what humanity could be in a different universe. To that effect, they’re just as unusual to the player character—a robo—as any other beings they might encounter.
“I really wanted humans to become an alien species like all the others,” Gelinas says. “In (almost) every sci-fi property, you play as a human, you read about a human's perspective on this, how this changes human culture. At the very start, we had a human player character [in Times & Galaxy]. And I was bored—we've seen that so many times.”
A precocious Gardener, a tech-savvy Neohuman and an underground Deep Dweller.
Times & Galaxy’s version of “our” species is split into factions based on the amount of technology they’ve embraced from inter-solar contact: The Neohumans are full techno-lovers, augmenting their physical selves with all sorts of upgrades, while the Gardeners prefer a more holistic approach synchronicity with their planet’s natural offerings. The third faction, Deep Dwellers, have not only rejected off-planet technology, they’ve hidden away from it, living in underground dwellings they initially fled into after first contact.
In approaching humanity’s design, Gibson started with those factions: specifically, how they’d choose to present themselves.
“The more characters I made, the more clear an image I had of what people wear, what their clothing styles say about them,” they explain. “There’s a lot of Neohumans who wear a lot of strange clothing—not necessarily impractical, but … very svelte wear that doesn’t necessarily show how it was put together.
“A lot of times, I would just think, well, what kind of person have I not drawn yet?” Gibson continues. “In terms of body shapes, in terms of skin colors, in terms of gender expression.”
AUGERS
The very first story the player is assigned in Times & Galaxy brings you to Aug. It’s a barren, desert-like planet filled with junk and desperation… and the augers, surprisingly pleasant lizard people who relish their situation. They accept junk from every corner of the universe, so they can reconfigure it as they see fit.
“Lizard people are something that I don't think enough sci-fi goes to,” Gelinas says. “Oftentimes aliens are other-worldly, but to make them reptilian generally makes them evil. I didn't want that. I wanted a species who lived in a very arid place and survived there because it was made for them. …The other inspiration for them was the junkions in Transformers: The Movie.”
“A lot of initial designs were pretty, pretty wild,” Gibson adds. “They looked a lot more like kaiju, a lot more monstrous. Some strange shapes.”
Augers, the decidedly non-evil lizard people of the Dorp system.
But adding the idea of being a junk-harvesting species gave Gibson a framework to tinker with, and some influences to draw on.
“When Ben and I were throwing around reference points very early on, I was referencing a lot of late nineties, early 2000s space punk anime, like Outlaw Star—things that are a little more like junk punk,” they explain. “It's a lot of fun to get to play in that space … this idea of the space refuse that [the augers] all go through has just been such an ultimate playground, to grab parts to make new characters with.”
ROBOS
The robos of Times & Galaxy were brought to Dorp by the xeel. They’re purpose built, with the ability to feel and think like fleshier forms of life, but in need of socialization and education like an organic being might.
“The longer that a robo is out in the worlds, the more they become themselves, and might alter themselves like we see [in the game] with some janitorbots,” Gelinas says. “They develop more personality as their experiences change and are uniquely theirs.”
At the start of the robo design process, Gibson found themselves struggling with the high level of detail mechanical beings can invite. A different starting place was required.
“I had to pull back a little bit,” Gibson says. “I was looking at a lot of early American animation—I say early, but I mean stuff like The Jetsons, where it was this very stylized approach to robotics: placing the emphasis on the character rather than the complexity of the machinery. That opened up my brain a little bit more, and I was able to have an easier time with it. After that point, I was approaching a lot of the robots with the idea of ‘What's their job? How can I best convey that job through their shapes?’”
Robos are purpose-built for things like cooking, completely obliterating their opponents, and cleaning!
For example, Janitorbot’s shape was inspired by a custodial pushcart, while Foodbot’s details and edges pull from culinary equipment.
“The more I could pull from existing imagery and shapes to put into these robots, the easier time I was kind of having of it,” Gibson says. “From that, a language was being built up that I could then riff off of.”
VERGE
Of the five-or-so sentient species in Times & Galaxy, the verge may be the most visually unique: they’re moon-living, structure-loving, plant-like beings with distinctive sets of antler-like growths sprouting out of their heads. They live in geodesic domes on an icy moon called Pryto, orbiting a far-flung gas giant known as The Gassy One. The verge favor rigid societal roles and theater where snacks and pre-show banter are evaluated as part of the overall performance.
Early verge sketches were more traditionally mammalian, Gibson notes, but their final design came from combining two very different ideas.
“I had two sketches,” Gibson notes. “One was this strange tree creature, sort of a Groot situation. This [other design] had very strange, unique proportions, but was also inspired by star-nosed moles. Ben suggested taking those two and merging them … That's kind of how we ended up with Ch’lun and Fa’rel.”
Behold the math behind verge design!
That unique combo was exactly the sort of thing that Gelinas was hoping that Gibson, a newcomer to games, would bring to their designs.
“I’ve been in the industry for 13 years,” he says. “I purposefully built this team to have roughly half the people with a lot of experience in games, while the others have little or no experience in games. I did that because I think the longer you work in an industry, the more you kind of are tempted to fall into routines and feel like you know the way to do something.
“Bringing in people who have never worked on a game, but are just super creative, and then saying ‘I'll be the one to say no, just go hard, do what you wanna do and think is right,’ means we have things in this game that you don't usually see in games,” he continues. “People who've been making games for a long time would've been ‘oh, we can't do that, or no, we shouldn't do that.’ … It makes for a game that hopefully isn't like any other game out there.”
Times & Galaxy launches on June 21. Wishlist and check out the demo now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/883230/Times__Galaxy/
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