Hello darkness and insanity lovers,
It’s been exactly a month since we have shown Edge of Sanity for the first. We are deeply grateful for all the feedback we’ve gathered since, especially during Gamescom and Tokyo Games Show, and your great reception of the reveal trailer and the games' art style.
Before you book your trip to Alaska, we’ve promised to provide you with a monthly development updates. So, today, Karol, our Art Director and Game Designer, together with Robert, PR & Marketing Manager will talk you through the unique art style of Edge of Sanity.
Early days
Robert: Darkness, disturbance, vulnerability - judging from those early concepts, it looks like this was plan from the beginning?
Karol: The initial plan was to create a game set in Antarctica, even before Frostpunk! (laughing). I was thinking about more of an adventure game with some action gameplay. It could have some horror vibes, but not to the current extent.
Robert: So… Why not pursuing it?
Karol: Well, while this setting looks great on concepts, technically there is not much happening there, right? For a small, 1–2-hour story, it could have worked out, but Alaska has more potential, especially for survival horror. And it still is a winter setting, that seems to suit Lovecraft-inspired stories.
We want to showcase how raw the Alaskan tundra is, that it was a magical, hard to reach place (especially during 80s), so the darkness of Mignola’s inspired art style puts an emphasis of this uncertainty and Lovecraftian riddle.
Robert: The mysterious stone coming from space was there since the beginning. Have you dreamed about it or what?
Karol Well, I’ve read The Colour Out of Space, a story in which a stone similar to ours ends up in a well. You should check this classic if you still haven’t.
Robert: Will do! One more question about the old days. Where is the winter cap of the main character???!
Karol: When, Vikings in the movies often don’t have helms so you can see their face better and feel more attached, righted? (laughing) BTW, do you know that usually the average height of a human is 7-8 times of head’s length? Currently we are more within 3-4, that also enhanced the comic look.
Robert: Well… but then it became more… contrasty? Contour-heavy? You know, this slight Darkest Dungeon vibe that everyone is talking about.
Karol: In fact, this vibe was there in a beginning, but the old concept had a smaller number of dark assets. It all changed when we decided to make a survival horror. In Hellboy, you have a lot of very dimmed backgrounds, but in Edge of Sanity it would create a problem - when everything starts blending together. We’ve toned it down (from Darkest Dungeon aesthetic too) to avoid it.
Robert: Well, it looks like you have so much of hand-drawing of backgrounds ahead of you?
Karol: Yes and no. Yes, because the locations important for the story are in fact manually placed graphically, and well, we have over 20 of story important missions at the moment. But on the other hand, other locations are combined of individual assets - varying in size, of course.
Robert: Oh yeah, and the reveal trailer. We’ve spent some time on that, huh? Was it helpful for finilizing the art style or not?
Karol: Of course, it would be better to work on the game for the full time if marketing was not taking us from it. (laughing) Well, the art-style was there, some elements were more or less ready. But assets from the trailer will make it to the final game, they might be mixed together in a slightly varied way, though.
Robert: And those individual assets. Do you event count them?
Karol: No, why should I? :>
Well, we have 189 of different wooden planks, 97 stones, 247 sets of trees, so you can imagine… When we are finalizing the look of the levels, I am improving them, and the new variant is created. So, there will definitely be more of them.
Robert: Wow, looks like it is not easy to make them all visually aligned?
Karol: It depends. This is a very specific art-style. At the first glance it looks like it is easy to achieve, but very often we end up need polish them, because you can see something is off. We need to find the balance between comic style with a touch of realism. And being on the edge is tough (NO PUN INTENDED). It’s hard to choose when to scale down the level of details.
Robert: Less light, more light, less light, more light - I know we are going through some iterations here and there. What’s the plan now?
Karol: Well, tweaks will keep coming, I guess. I can say we literally started from the level of no light sources at all, even from our character. You literally couldn’t see a thing without a lamp.
Robert: And the parallax effect, I kept asking you guys when we are going to see it, remember?
Karol: Yeah, you kept asking about it… We wanted it since the beginning so we always knew those early builds you have seen will look better, like GTA VI will probably too (laughing). I can say we will try to spend some time on animating backgrounds and making them more alive too.
So that’s it! We are very approachable, so if you wish to share all kinds of feedback or question, art style related or not, please consider leaving follow here and/or joining our Discord:
We are grateful for all kinds of support! <3
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1897110/Edge_of_Sanity/
Talk to you soon!