Hello everyone,
A lot has happened since our last devlog, with our most important recent announcement being the August 13th, 2026 release date for Servant of the Lake!
View game pageAnd now, as we enter the final 2 months before the big launch, we are as focused as ever on finishing development and delivering the best possible version of Servant of the Lake. In the meantime, we’d like to go more in-depth about one of our main sources of inspiration for most of our Rusty Lake games, including Servant of the Lake. There is something special about seeing a very talented artist re-envision the world that you, as a game developer, were in the process of conceptualizing.
Outdoor Servant of the Lake Backgrounds
During our initial stages of mapping out our ideas for Servant of the Lake, Johan Scherft - Dutch painter and developer of Milo and the Magpies and Milo and the Christmas Gift - who has been doing background paintings for our games since Rusty Lake: Roots and the Cube Escape days - invited us to his studio, where we could admire the newly painted landscape of the Rusty Lake world. This new landscape art matched the time period and setting of Servant of the Lake while retaining familiar landmarks that fans first witnessed in the outdoor backgrounds of Rusty Lake Roots. Not only that, but after previously sharing with us one of his creative ideas, he had also already created a layered style of the landscape painting - with different elements of the painting, such as the mountains, grassy areas or the lake, painted on cut-out canvas so when placed in front of the base painting, it would create a 3D effect when looking at the painting straight on. This allowed us to use the parallax effect in outdoor in-game scenes to add depth and movement to the environment while maintaining the hand-drawn 2D art style our games are known for.
*For clarity, the parallax effect is a visual effect where different elements move at different speeds as you move from side to side, creating an illusion of depth and a more dynamic experience.
*Johan uses a mix of watercolors and pencil to create his iconic nature scenes
Having such a detailed painted background of the nature surrounding the Vanderboom mansion really allowed us to explore and add more outdoor scenes as well as create more visually interesting transition screens and cutscenes between the various levels of Servant of the Lake - you can already experience this visual effect in the intro of the Servant of the Lake demo during the carriage ride that brings you to the Vanderboom house - and expect even more examples in the full version of Servant of the Lake!
The Vanderboom Siblings
Another impressive feat from Johan was his painted renditions of the 3 main characters at the core of the story of Servant of the Lake. We had the idea of having some oil paintings of Aldous, William and Alexandra, but seeing the three portraits painted by Johan was beyond anything we imagined! The portraits expertly captured their essence and personality, making them more human and real, which really helped us delve into their story and motivations. This, in turn, was a massive help in shaping the overall narrative of the game, gave us ideas for in-game puzzles, while also giving us a ton of inspiration for marketing the game at events, creating merch, making social media content, etc.
*Oil painting on canvas
Overall, working with someone like Johan Scherft has consistently been a source of endless inspiration, combined with the absolute joy of seeing our world being captured in a different medium that so perfectly complements our games and the digital art you see in Servant of the Lake and the rest of our Rusty Lake titles. We feel very lucky to have begun this collaboration, and we look forward to seeing how it develops for both Rusty Lake and Johan, as an artist and game developer!
You can check out all of Johan Scherft's projects here! And make sure to Wishlist Servant of the Lake!
We look forward to sharing more of Johan Scherft's paintings in Servant of the Lake on August 13th, 2026!
