Welcome back to On The Record
This time on On The Record, we’re stepping into the visual heart of Hopetown. Art director Astri Lohne has been a huge part of shaping the game’s strange, beautiful world. A place balanced between the familiar and the surreal.
In this interview, Astri takes us behind the scenes of Hopetown’s art direction, sharing how the environments came to life and how she approached creating characters who feel at home in this uncanny setting. She also talks about the creative choices behind the game’s isometric style, the oddest places she’s found inspiration, and more.
Behind the Canvas
Tell us a little bit about yourself – who you are, and what you do on Hopetown.
I’m Astri, the art director on Hopetown! I’ve been working as a concept artist for the past 10 years, which is something I’ve been obsessed with ever since I was a teenager and I realized someone has to draw all the cool things in the video games I was playing.
How did you first get involved with the project? What drew you to Hopetown?
I first heard about Longdue in a very similar way to most people - I saw the studio announcement on LinkedIn of all places and got very excited, as someone who adores Disco Elysium and narrative-first games. Then I saw a job posting for Art Director and very nervously filled in an application, completely expecting to hear nothing back. But to my surprise I received an email asking if I’d be free for an interview, and now here we are!
What does Hopetown look and feel like to you, even beyond the concept art?
Hopetown feels like a nostalgic and familiar place - something that echoes our real world and personal experiences, but with a twist of strangeness and discomfort. It’s a world that is spiky, colourful but melancholic, and full of contrast. With the art design I HOPE (hehe) to instil players with this sense of strange familiarity, and imperfect beauty.
What were your guiding inspirations for the character design in Hopetown?
I always like to look to the real world with character designs, even when working on fantasy or sci-fi projects. There’s so much rich history to draw from both in terms of fashion and culture, and so many regular people that roll out of bed looking like a video game character! I love people-watching, or simply thinking about people I know and how they might be similar to a character I’m working on. I think it instills character designs with a sense of life that you miss out on if you just look at the newest trendy concept on Pinterest.
One thing I keep repeating when it comes to our characters is that they are rugged, characterful, and imperfect. There is beauty here, but not the kind you would see on the cover of a magazine. People are not sanitized and aspirational - they should feel real, and their clothing should reflect what matters to them and where they come from.
The world of Hopetown sits somewhere between the familiar and the surreal. How did you shape that tension in your visual language?
That comes down to two separate things - pure design and then execution. A lot of this can be achieved by following a fundamental tenet of concept design, which is that things should feel familiar but different. It’s deceptively simple - take something we have in our world, like a car. That just feels derivative and out of place in an original setting, so what you want to do then is twist it or add an unexpected element! You can’t just take the wheels off and make it float, because even that is too familiar a trope at this point - but change the body to wood and push and pull the silhouette, and you have something that feels familiar but brand new at the same time.
Then the second part is execution - Hopetown is a painterly game, which is the perfect style to create this expressive and sometimes surreal feeling. Forms can be undefined with lost edges bleeding into each other, a wash of red can be applied over an otherwise friendly face, texture can obscure and twist the corner of a room. We also use colour and light to bend the way things look and feel. Humans have a lot of subconscious feelings tied to these things, and as artists we can manipulate these elements to instil emotions that heighten our world and story beats where needed, or to add a supernatural tone. Where’s that beam of light coming from? I could’ve sworn this area was a different hue last time I came through?
When it comes to environment design, what inspired the look and feel of Hopetown’s spaces – from its streets and interiors to the wilder, stranger edges of the world?
So much! Again, we looked towards the real world a lot - living in London for the past year and a bit, I’ve personally been quite inspired by the contradictions found all around me. Old medieval cobblestone houses next to brutalist train stations next to a tent next to a glass skyscraper. It can feel quite disorienting at times, but if you pay attention it also becomes a tapestry of history right in front of you. This rich history, and the mess made by rapid progress and expansion, is something I’m very excited to keep exploring with the spaces of Hopetown.
I’m also inspired by all the games I’ve played, and all the digital worlds I’ve gotten to explore - Dishonored, Oxenfree, Disco Elysium, even Hollow Knight. I’d also be amiss to not mention Twin Peaks and the way it blended cozy nostalgia with bizarre supernatural spaces.
How did the isometric camera choice influence your artistic decisions?
The isometric camera is a delight for artists, because every single space is essentially a painting we can control and present to the player however we want. Because you can’t move the camera angle, the composition can be carefully curated, each element placed exactly where you want.
The challenge it brings is readability and clarity. For my first proper job in the games industry, I worked on a top-down MOBA-like game. It was very different stylistically from Hopetown, but it taught me a lot of valuable lessons about gameplay clarity and accessibility. If you go overboard with a top-down camera or don’t consider things like silhouette and tonal blocking, you might end up with pillars obscuring important navigational space, characters who blend into their environment and get lost, and a very frustrated player. So it’s a balance of crafting these bespoke and beautiful paintings, and ensuring it still reads well and feels intuitive!
If players walk away from Hopetown with just one feeling or idea, what do you hope it will be?
I’ve played a lot of games over the years, and a handful of them have contained stories and worlds so fully realized that I find myself coming back to them time and time again - listening to their soundtracks, replaying them entirely, watching 5 hour video essays on YouTube diving into the themes and discovering things I never even encountered in my playthrough. I think these games are special because they were created with genuine passion, joy and authenticity, and that’s why they stay with us.
If the people who play Hopetown come out of it having discovered something new about themselves, having tapped into a feeling they haven’t felt in a long time, or feeling like they want to keep coming back to this world, I’ll be one very happy game developer.
Quick Sketches
Tea, coffee, or something else?
Coffee coffee coffee coffee.
One NPC you’d grab a drink with?
The little ball in Deltarune.
Weirdest Google search you’ve done for Hopetown research?
Oh god. There’s been so many I’m definitely on some sort of list by now.
One song you’d add to the Hopetown art playlist?
Mirror - For Those I Love
Biggest art inspiration?
To avoid writing an entire essay I’ll narrow it down, but there’s just so many incredible artists that inspire me daily - and what we’re making with Hopetown wouldn’t be possible without those that have come before.
To list A FEW I’d say Piotr Jablonski, Karla Ortiz, Craig Mullins, and David Lynch.
Closing Note
The world of Hopetown is still taking shape, but Astri's vision makes it clear. This is a town where every corner holds a story, and nothing is ever quite as it seems.
The Next Lead
Our next On The Record will spotlight another corner of Hopetown’s development — diving into how story, systems, and art continue to weave together. We’ll be sharing more concept work, behind-the-scenes thoughts from the team, and glimpses into how this strange little town keeps growing.
Keep an eye on our socials and the dev blog for the next instalment.
Join The Conversation
We're building more than just a game with Hopetown, we're building a community. And we'd love for you to be a part of it!
Come share your thoughts, theories, and favourite details from Astri's interview over on our Discord. It's the best place to chat with other players, meet the devs, and get the latest updates straight from the team.
Until then,
– The Hopetown Team