Welcome to our brand new devblog! We’re unveiling details about the making of Curse of the Dead Gods, the new roguelite by Passtech Games coming to Steam Early Access on March 3. Today, we’re excited to share more info about its unique art direction!
In order to get exclusive info, we met up with Passtech Games’ Art Director Valentin André-Terramors to discuss challenges and creative vision.
Our aim was always to find a recognizable aesthetic for Curse of The Dead Gods. Passtech Games is a small indie studio and we had to be crafty and ingenuous as a team to reach our goal. Everyone at Passtech is motivated and wants to create a unique looking video game.
I am fond of 2D aesthetics and everything with a hand-drawn feel, even when the product itself is a 3D game. This naturally led me to exploring this during Curse of The Dead Gods’ development.
Light and shadows are at the core of the experience in Curse of The Dead Gods and they were also one of the first concepts introduced at the beginning of the creative process. The image of a lone explorer, equipped only with his torch to navigate an ancient temple - this is what inspired the whole team both for game design and art direction.
Choosing to accentuate the shadows by giving them sharp edges was a big decision and big change for the art direction. From that point on, everything away from the light in-game was pitch-black and therefore full of mysteries, treasures and potential foes. Those big inked shadows gave a distinct dark art fantasy and comic book aesthetic to the game.
When Passtech Games started working on Curse of The Dead Gods, the temple was supposed to be a mysterious lost city where explorers, from various time periods, would succeed each other. The player would then meet fantastic mythological beasts linked to major civilizations. This initial idea was really interesting and opened a world of possibilities but also made everything more complicated for a unified Art Direction. Should the lost city be close to Egyptian architecture with some Angkor touches or should it look like a Greek Atlantis?
Adrien (Lead Designer), Sylvain (Lead Programmer and CEO of Passtech Games), and I talked and finally settled on depicting one architectural style and one civilization. At that point, the studio had already worked out the game mechanic that enables the player to sacrifice gold or blood. This seemed fitting for a South American culture (human sacrifice, El Dorado myth). Unlike other exploration games like Tomb Raider and Uncharted, the team’s goal was to create a dark fantasy universe and distance the game from realism.
The Mayan civilization is enigmatic and still not very well understood. Its mythology evolved over time, making it a perfect setting for a mysterious, forgotten temple.
Visually, a lost temple is a very interesting setting: we try to bring thousand-year-old architectural art to life through colors and gilding. The amount of ornaments and sculptures is perfect for a game where shadows and lights are so present. Mayan and Aztec civilizations open a range of possibilities regarding typical enemies and bosses.
PassTech Games was inspired by various works to render a unique aesthetic. During development the team used to call the game a “3D Darkest Dungeon”, itself inspired by comic artists such as Mike Mignola. The comic Long John Silver was one of my main references for its dark ambiance and a storytelling about a lost Maya temple.
We also got inspired by other materials such as The Lost City of Z (for its greedy explorers and their obsessions), Apocalypto (for its archeological reconstructions), the Road to El Dorado (for its amazing scenery).
screenshot from The Road to El Dorado (2000) by DreamWorks Pictures.
Video games also heavily contributed to our inspirations with Diablo 3, and Gauntlet (2014) for top-down classics or Hades as an unrivalled example of development and polish since its announcement.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild was also a great inspiration for cel shading and VFX effects. This type of cel shading makes the character’s movement more fluid and easier to spot. Both readability and movement are essential to a game with a top-down camera where the character is only taking up a small portion of the screen.
Curse of the Dead Gods launches in Early Access on Steam on March 3rd, 2020: https://curse-of-the-dead-gods.com
The game will also be showcased at PAX East 2020 from February 27th to March 1st at the Focus Home Interactive booth (n°29017)!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1123770/Curse_of_the_Dead_Gods/