Welcome back one more time, mercenaries! We're at the third stop in our journey through the making of Frosthaven, and this time we're focusing on the teams behind animation, visual effects, and sound— the people who shape how the world looks, feels, and sounds.
These teams have done a lot of experimenting to bring the world of Frosthaven to life. Making things feel real and immersive takes a lot of trial and error and solving unexpected problems along the way. That’s why, this month, we’re letting the teams speak for themselves and share what it’s really like to build a fantasy world from the ground up.
Join us for a journey through the stories of the cooks themselves, the ones who made the magic happen.
The animations that make everything epic
Animation plays a huge role in bringing the world of our game to life. It’s not just about making characters move, it’s about giving them personality, weight, and emotion. Whether it’s the subtle shift in a creature’s stance before it attacks, or the way a hero coughs after being poisoned, every movement helps tell the story. Animation is key to making players feel truly connected to their surroundings. It turns gameplay into a living, breathing experience. We are giving the word to our animation lead Momchil Gindyanov as he explains the process in more detail.
“We set out to create a faithful representation of the Frosthaven boardgame. Doing so meant that we could not use standard video games industry tricks of minimizing the characters count with reuse and mixing parts. Every hero, every monster, miniboss and boss had to be accounted for. Every summon as well. To achieve our goal for Frosthaven Digital we successfully created and animated more than 150 characters with their full animation sets, idles, attacks, casts, hit reactions and more.
Heroes have the largest animation sets as they have a lot of abilities and in some cases have unique animation for a single card. They behave differently when there are enemies in the room and have special animations when they are poisoned or wounded. Bringing to life all the characters from Frosthaven was a memorable adventure for the animation team.”
The effects that bring the spark in the battle
Visual effects are essential to creating the atmosphere and impact of our game world. They add energy, drama, and magic to everything like powerful abilities and intense battles. Whether it’s the shimmer of an enchanted weapon, the blast of a spell, or the flicker of torchlight in a dark cave, visual effects help communicate what’s happening in the world and how it feels. They’re the sparks that bring fantasy to life and make every moment more exciting and immersive. Let’s let our VFX lead Ivan Spasov tell us himself how the process of working on the visual effects went.
“Frosthaven is a very exciting project to work on! The original board game is developed with such immense creativity - each character has their own unique flavor and spark. This level of originality carries with it both great artistic freedom and a high level of difficulty when developing VFX. We have to strike a hard balance between carrying over the fantasy and mood of a character, while also effectively communicating gameplay.
We understood early on that we need VFX with a punch - something that would make these larger-than-life characters pop even more. At the same time, we knew that we needed a large variety of VFX to accommodate for all of the cards, skills and flavors these characters possess. From there it was about building a shape language and a color scheme, especially for the heroes. The effects need to look interesting and unique, while they also need to fit together tightly - within the context of a character, of a flavor and of the entire game world and aesthetic.
We knew we had found our voice when we developed the VFX for the Algox Chieftain boss. It was a bit of an "aha moment", where we saw for the first time what that balance of flashiness and functionality could look like. We carried that over to other characters, while pushing the style further and that gave us the chance to nail the look. We've had the great pleasure of pushing the boundaries of what our visuals can do with some characters. Players will be able to see some of that early on with the Geminate and Deathwalker, while some of the more extreme examples will be found in later content.”
The sound that brings you right into the world
Sound effects are a vital part of making our game world feel real and alive. Every footstep, sword swing or creature roar adds depth and texture to the player’s experience. Good sound doesn’t just support the action—it enhances it, helping players feel the weight of every hit. In a fantasy world like ours, sound effects also help define the personality of each creature and environment, blending realism with imagination to fully draw players into the adventure. We are joined here by Simeon Dotkov for a short explanation on how the sound effects became what they are now.
“While developing the sound effects for our game, we initially prioritized using highly accurate, realistic audio to authentically represent the various creatures in the world. Our goal was to ground the experience in a sense of believable realism. However, due to the fantasy nature of the game, we often found it necessary to creatively enhance or completely alter these sounds to better suit the dramatic tone and unique characteristics of our monsters, creatures, and characters. This approach allowed us to deliver a more immersive and impactful audio experience that complements the imaginative scope of the game world.”
What comes next?
We are still working hard on refining the game, so it feels like the experience you have all been waiting for. We have collected all of the feedback from the demo we recently issued on Steam Next fest, and we are actively working to implement as much of it as possible inside the game. With the help of our amazing community council who are all very passionate about Frosthaven, we are aiming to make all the best decisions for the future of the game, and if you did not get accepted in the council initially, don’t worry you still may get surprised.
Now that we are leaving our third stop, it is time to gather our party and travel forward as the journey is far from over. Next time, we will be taking a look into the amazing environment art that our team had to work on from scratch, so be sure to tune in again to hear the stories of how the world was shaped from the ground up!
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Discord: https://discord.gg/FUNmzWVfz2