Until now, we’ve mostly been working in Fallen London, a setting that substantively takes place in a cave, with little in the way of sunlight, seasons, or real weather. In Mandrake, we’re making a new visual world from scratch, which as you might expect begins with asking questions: what are our visual touchpoints? What are we trying to say about the world?
A Grounded World
Mandrake has a fantasy setting, but we want it to feel like a believable, natural space.
We started with British landscapes. It’s very helpful of them to be as varied as they are, whether it's the Yorkshire Dales, Scottish Highlands or the east coast of Scotland (the entire art team lives in or around Edinburgh, so we've got loads of natural beauty on the doorstep).
Dollar Glen and Belhaven Bay, Scotland
In Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies the camera was so far away, much was left to interpretation in the environment (and the writers could freely invent all sorts of things that we’d never have to draw!).
The area the game takes place in this time is smaller and more intimate, but much deeper. We really wanted you to be able to peel back the layers of meaning as you move around in the world, over time. It’s a brand new thing for us to even have a game where you can see the character’s feet on the floor! Or rabbits darting into burrows, or frogs hopping into ponds.
Now we're being much more explicit about the world in the art, there's less room for the writers to freely invent stuff in the text - but more direct collaboration with the artists in finding meaning in things we can see, which then feeds back into the stories.
The Chaos of Nature
Nature is relatively controlled closer to Chandley. As you move further away from it, things become more chaotic. Among the wildest places in Mandrake is the Deepwoods.
Environments in the rural life genre tend to be more tile-based. I often love how these games look, but it's hard to break out of rigidity in that style. We really wanted to capture a gradient as you move from civilization to wilderness, which has benefited a lot from a more painterly, organic style.
This is a space where people rarely tread; most people from Chandley will avoid going there and you're warned off going yourself. Things are more familiar and nostalgic when you're closer to Chandley, and as you move further away they become almost alien. We visited the Puzzlewood, a temperate rainforest in the Forest of Dean, and we found useful reference from there for the Deepwoods.
This is also where people will see a bit more of a Ghibli influence in the world. We are huge Ghibli fans. One of the things that I love most about Ghibli films is the attention to detail in their natural spaces, and the way that they give moments for contemplation in them. You get a few seconds of a little brook or the base of a tree and things growing there. They're some of my favorite bits in those films. In Princess Mononoke for example, the way that these forests are almost like cathedrals is a definite inspiration for us with the Deepwoods.
Building on the past
We have three main cultures that have left a mark on the landscape in Mandrake. There's the contemporary society of Chandley, the local village; there's old Penhallion, who were the original culture in these lands; and the culture that took over Penhalion, the powerful Sophoi empire - that eventually met its fall.
One of the things I think that's really cool about the setting is that some of these ruins were mysteries even to the contemporary inhabitants. Even when the Sophoi were the prevailing society, they weren't accessible to the general populace. For the ordinary people of Penhallion, there were these huge monolithic structures on their doorstep that they didn't understand the function of. One of the things that you'll be doing is poking your nose into what the Sophoi structures might mean.
Come rain, shine or shadow
We’re also very excited to have a full range of weather, after 15 years in a cavern! We want you to see how Chandley changes over the course of the year, through the seasons and in different weathers.
This is quite technical, but we recently finished converting all of our scenes from pure 2D, where all of the sprites exist on a flat plane together, into 3D. Which doesn’t mean we’re suddenly making a fully 3D game, but it does mean we're going to be able to do exciting things with shadows.
Shadows are an important part of helping the world feel like a real, natural space. They show time of day, and the changing seasons. They have a particular quality in winter, we’ll have tree shadows across a leaf covered path in autumn, and bird shadows from overhead. All of which will bring the world to richer life.