Kaitlin Tremblay is the narrative director at Soft Rains. As a writer and narrative designer, they’ve worked on games such as Grindstone (CAPY Game), Watch Dogs Legion (Ubisoft), A Mortician’s Tale, and others. They are the author of two non-fiction books on video games: Ain’t No Place for a Hero: Borderlands (ECW Press, 2017) and Collaborative Worldbuilding for Video Games (CRC Press, 2023).
The story of Ambrosia Sky is a homecoming tale, of Dalia returning to the asteroid colony where she was born, 15 years after she left in a huff. And as such, the other characters who inhabit this world are essential players in the story of Ambrosia Sky.
So, for this developer log on Ambrosia Sky, I wanted to take some time and talk about the other main characters in the game. There’s Maaz, Dalia’s Scarab partner and best friend. There’s Maeve, the estranged love of her life. And Hale, the overbearing stepmother. All of these characters play an important role, both in Dalia’s story, but also in the story of the Cluster & the story of the world Dalia left behind, the one that kept ticking without her.
Maaz, our man-in-the-van
While Dalia is technically alone on this job, she’s not without support, in the form of a Scarab named Maaz. Maaz is Dalia’s man-in-the-van, acting as both her mission dispatch and her sample analyst. While Dalia is out in the field, she’s dictating her notes to Maaz, which she uploads every time she returns to her shuttle. Maaz receives these observation notes and is able to provide delayed emotional support to Dalia, while also using the notes as crucial contextual information as he analyzes the samples Dalia sends to him while performing her job.
Maaz isn’t just waiting for Dalia’s notes or samples, though. Despite their distance, Maaz has remote access to Dalia’s shuttle, so he’s able to monitor nearby comms, signals, and alerts while Dalia is deep in the field. And while this is primarily a safety precaution to protect Dalia from stray asteroids, it also allows Maaz to scan for any signs of life and movement on the Cluster that could indicate not everybody is dead. A role that will become incredibly important for Dalia’s motivations while she explores the Cluster.
Maaz joined up with the Scarabs shortly before Dalia. A lighthearted and charismatic man born to wealthy colonists in one of the furthest galaxies, Maaz sought to join up with the Scarabs out of boredom. He was tired of the same socialite people, and, like Dalia, he wanted out from the controlling regimes of his parents. Due to his upbringing, Maaz is a man who is comfortable in his own skin and naturally puts others at ease. Maaz has nothing to prove and effortlessly finds himself as the life of the party. As a Scarab, Maaz is ambivalent about the panacea–it could exist or it couldn’t. What Maaz is really after, though, is learning everything there is to know about the exo-life that exists in the galaxy.
It’s this background that makes Maaz an important and necessary foil to Dalia. When they meet, Maaz is fascinated by Dalia. He’s never met somebody from the Cluster before! And Dalia is at first put off by Maaz’s interest in her, but quickly accepts that he genuinely cares for her. Maaz’s affection for Dalia grows as he realizes she is the opposite of him in so many ways. They bond over their controlling parents, through both finding the Scarabs as a way to escape the life they don’t want, and Maaz’s insistent presence becomes a comfort to Dalia. He doesn’t want anything from her except for her friendship, and Dalia doesn’t want anything from Maaz except for his. Whereas Dalia is this emotionally tumultuous person, Maaz is her rock. As one of the few people she’s allowed herself to get close to since leaving her hometown, he’s able to ground her, help her. She’ll listen to him the way she won’t listen to pretty much anybody else.
But the emotional grounding isn’t the only reason we wanted to provide Maaz as a character. We knew we wanted Dalia’s experience and story to feel isolated, that her feeling of loneliness needed to be reinforced by her actual isolation on this journey. However, we still wanted a character to serve as a balance to her, both to provide moments of levity and to be a voice for the players. Since Dalia is from the Cluster, she isn’t always able to call out what’s strange. But it’s all new to Maaz, and so we wanted Maaz to be the voice that calls out the weird things Dalia might take for granted. Like sentient fungus. Like creatures that can change shape. Those sorts of things.
Developing Maaz was a lot of fun because of the way we envisioned him as a foil for Dalia. But we didn’t just want him to be a stoic, solid rock of a best friend. We wanted him to be weird and to have his own perspectives, as well. Maaz, despite joining the Scarabs, has a weak stomach and is easily grossed out. And he has a fervent belief in sentient, humanoid alien life. He’s the Mulder to Dalia’s Scully, without the sexual tension. He wants to believe, and that includes believing in hot aliens, as well as in Dalia.
Maeve, the one who didn’t wait
And then there’s Maeve, the reason for it all.
Maeve was Dalia’s best friend on the Cluster. Maeve was also the first person Dalia ever loved, despite Dalia never being able to tell Maeve this. Maeve and Dalia met as children in school, both studying agriculture from a young age. Dalia because Hale made her. Maeve, because she thought there was no other choice. However, Maeve was never good at their agricultural studies, despite Dalia excelling in them. Their differences bonded them together; Dalia helped Maeve with her studies, and Maeve became a confidante to Dalia. A lot of people kept their distance from Dalia on the Cluster, due to being the stepdaughter of the woman running the joint with an iron fist, but Maeve didn’t care about that. Thick as thieves, the only thing that could’ve broken Maeve and Dalia apart as teens was Dalia herself. So when Dalia left without warning at the age of 15 to become a Scarab, Maeve was hurt and furious. Both for Dalia abandoning her and for not even telling her she was going.
But Maeve refuses to wait for Dalia’s return and embraces her own reckless decisions. Since Dalia’s departure, Maeve has worked under Hale and become the beating heart of the Cluster, responsible for the community’s daily operations and welfare. While Maeve was never good with soil, she was always good with people and with numbers. She makes sure everybody is fed. She requisitions equipment for those who need it. She helps out at the clinic when it’s short-staffed. Maeve genuinely loves the Cluster, not for its history or mythos, but for the people who live there and make it what it is. Maeve is willing to work a thankless, stressful job if it means people on the Cluster can do what they need to do with less hassle.
Maeve’s role in the story of Ambrosia Sky is one of the most important ones: she’s the beacon of hope for Dalia. As Dalia begins to tailspin in her survivor’s guilt, Maeve being alive is the one thing that keeps her afloat. We wanted a reason for Dalia to stay at the Cluster when things got progressively worse throughout the game, and professionalism wasn’t enough of a reason. Dalia left once before when things got too emotionally complicated for her; being here because she’s on a job wouldn’t be enough to keep her from peacing out yet again. So we knew we wanted a character who could be that lifeline for Dalia, the reason she would keep deciding to stay here even as her own life was threatened.
But I also didn’t want Maeve to exist just for Dalia. I wanted her to be her own character, with her own goals, needs and ideas. Just because she’s the lifeline for Dalia doesn’t mean Maeve wants that role or fulfills it willingly. Throughout the game, Maeve is actively trying to find a cure for Clusterlung, the disease that has run rampant on the Cluster as a result of the fungal crisis. Maeve is her own character with her own goals, goals that often run counter to Dalia’s motivations. Maeve is helping the people of the Cluster evacuate. Maeve stayed while Dalia left, and so Maeve has devoted herself to caring for the people in her community, no matter what. Throughout Ambrosia Sky, players will learn about and track Maeve’s journey, discovering all of the ways in which Maeve was trying to make life better on the Cluster, and using her position as Hale’s right hand to do so.
And when Dalia arrives at the Cluster, Maeve doesn’t change anything to meet her estranged friend. Maeve doesn’t want Dalia’s help and resents her coming back now, only when things are at their worst. She stays focused on her goal: to cure Clusterlung. No matter the cost. And as Dalia will discover throughout Ambrosia Sky, that cost might be higher than she ever could’ve imagined.
Hale, the controlling stepmother
With the people Dalia unquestionably loves introduced, let’s talk about the person Dalia has the most complicated feelings about: her stepmother, Hale.
Hale Volkova is the de facto leader of the Cluster. A second-generation Clusterite, Hale came into power via her family name: Hale’s father, Doctor Volkov, was one of the founders of the Cluster. And as such, Hale has inherited power here. Hale loves the Cluster deeply. Not because she loves the people there like Maeve, but rather that she loves the power it affords her. She loves her status and her perception of herself above all else.
Ambrosia Sky needed a villain. With the main threats to Dalia’s physical safety being hostile fungus and creatures, we were feeling the lack of an emotional threat to Dalia. Since this story is about Dalia’s homecoming, what is the full range of that emotional landscape like? If Maeve is the reason for Dalia to stay, who is the reason for Dalia constantly wanting to leave? Her stepmother is perfect. Perfect because folklore was a huge inspiration for the worldbuilding of Ambrosia Sky, and the evil stepmother is a well-known trope from that type of storytelling, and playing with that trope sounded like so much fun to explore in a sci-fi setting. Perfect because it meant I got to write a trope I love.
Nobody else in the Cluster really likes Hale. To borrow a phrase, a lot of the agricultural residents on the Cluster believe she’s “all hat, no cattle”, meaning she avoids getting her hands dirty doing the real, hard labour of working the fields. She’s also ruthless and believes she’s larger than life because of her family name and position. She’s, frankly, insufferable, and I love that about her. Nobody believes in her importance the way Hale believes in her importance.
And it’s not that Hale’s is without complexity. There’s a reason she believes she’s right, and that’s because she’s trying to run the colony in the best way that she can. She loves the Cluster, in part because it bestows power on her, but also because she was raised believing in the mythos of the Cluster. Her father was heroic, being one of the first pioneers to leave Earth to start building an agricultural colony to feed humanity’s expansion into space. Hale was raised believing the Cluster matters–because it does. And protecting the Cluster, therefore, matters just as much. Despite the Cluster’s fall from grace as humanity settled farther and farther from Earth, Hale still believes in its mythos, and she will lie to protect it because she believes it’s necessary. In fact, she believes it’s her job to lie to protect people. Hale believes fundamentally that the Cluster should survive at all costs. But as the crisis worsens and threatens life on the Cluster, Hale realizes that Dalia may be the only one who can help her save the Cluster. Which complicates things for Hale, who is the person that Dalia learned how to handle her emotions from.
Hale’s a lot of fun to write. She’s emotionally ruthless while also being self-aggrandizing. If writing Dalia and Maeve is tapping into complex emotional landscapes of battling self-need with what we owe each other, Hale is the opposite: she’s a person who unquestionably believes she’s right. It’s a pure, indulgent villain voice to write, and that’s what the game needed to balance the heaviness of the other themes. She’s not cartoonish, but she does provide a space to vent some of the heaviness of grief and survivor’s guilt into just pure, indulgent anger.
If you want to know more about the development of Ambrosia Sky, take a look at our prior dev logs that cover our main character Dalia, the role of a Scarab, the art & audio direction of the game, a look at the tech & design behind our cleaning mechanics, and an overview of what Ambrosia Sky is.
You can also download the demo from Steam to step right into Dalia’s shoes and see the crisis firsthand. In our next devlog, we’ll begin to talk about the cast of characters that surround and support Dalia on this journey.