Hey everyone! We’re still hard at work on Spirittea, and thought we’d start sharing some regular updates on development, as well as a little insight into how Spirittea has grown over the last few years! We’ll start with an important process we think has been REALLY COOL to see grow!
One of the important things that we think really sets the tone throughout the mountain town in Spirittea is potentially something that most folks might not realise so much planning went into - interiors! These have slowly become a way to tell stories and get the players to feel at home with cultures they might not have experienced before.
From the shops and houses in town to your lovely, large bathhouse, everything has gone through meticulous planning from a sketch level right through to the pixel art you’ve seen in our lovely demo! It’s all been important to get right so everything in Spirittea feels authentic to itself and the real-world influences that give it so much life (I have some AMAZING photos to show you in a later update!!)
The biggest one that kicked off making sure each indoor area was full of life, was planning out and drawing all of the objects inside the first floor of the local shop. The shop is based on small little convenient store-type shops CheeseMaster encountered many times in Korea, particularly in more rural towns. Many of these shops felt very lived-in and almost doubled as a living areas.
We want each area to be interesting and memorable, rather than dull and empty. It was an important homage to the feeling of home that a lot of these cultures foster naturally! So many of these became important during this stage of development, like the convenience store, restaurant and player home, then the local carpenter's workshop/home, the coffee shop, and the apartment building.
“The interiors are chock full of details which makes each room take a long time. If I can finish one interior in two or three days I'm happy. I have to also plan out who lives where, and think about what sorts of things they might have in their home. It's a challenging task, but is quite fun!"
We really hope you enjoy discovering all these little details when you play, it’s been a pure joy seeing them all come together. With each new addition, the mountain town slowly becomes more and more alive, and we cannot WAIT for you to join all our lovely characters and spirits and learn all about them!