"Hello, world!"
Despite a year when challenges seemed more insurmountable than ever, Solace State’s development went full steam ahead! Solace State in 2021 has seen more production development from both myself and our larger team than in any previous year. In fact, those of you who have played our last demo might notice how far it’s come even in the sample screenshots below!
My name is Tanya Kan, and I’ve been working on Solace State as the video game’s Director for years. I’m a studio owner who balances administration and marketing with development work, which includes leading in writing, art direction, 3D art, game design, and level design.
And I’m making this game so much bigger than what I initially anticipated, because I need to tell this story about a young woman coming to grips with how her personal anguish has a political root. It’s about her journey to find herself in a community and to move away from wholesale apathy, all while really gaining ownership over the choices that she can make.
Of course, you as the player will be able to likewise gain ownership over her journey within our choice-driven narrative. Below, the player makes a choice for Chloe when meeting Torrent for the first time.
None of us exist in a bubble away from politics, health, art, and work, so all my life I’ve never separated these spheres from each other, and made politics and health my art’s key themes.
Creating this narrative feels like distilling and bottling up a bit of hope for now, and for later. I hope you enjoy reading what we’ve been up to for now, and get excited with what’s to come.
Team
As for Solace State’s core development, our team has gotten larger since the beginning of 2020, bringing five additional specialists to help with Solace State’s production pipeline. And everyone brings with them unique perspectives and experiences. I learn something new weekly from the most junior to the most senior person!
Character Complexity and Art
The narrative now has over 30 characters with narrative lines and character art. We also added in a new main character, Sueli, who has both her own character arc as an experienced community leader, and can be Chloe’s potential love interest. Sueli was uniquely challenging to me as a writer at first, because I’ve lived with the story of Chloe, Rebecka, Torrent, and Alden and how they intertwine for years. But now, I cannot imagine how Solace State could possibly work without Sueli too.
Here’s a cute comic of Sueli! For more Solace State comics, be sure to join our Discord and follow us on Twitter for more! If you want to see us create more comics, please give us a nice comment! <3
We’ve expanded a lot more narrative nuance into how different characters experience gradual autocratic control, including through increased militarization, misinformation, and crackdowns.
We also improved on a lot of character art rendering, so that the camera can pull in tighter to give you those deeply emotional shots of the character’s expressions. This is combined with a lot of large 3D neighborhoods for Chloe and her gang to explore. Much of the architectural modelling is already complete, though we are working on adding details, colors, and shaders to them to really make them pop.
Visual Novel Presentation
Speaking of legibility, after some testing, we made the speech bubbles ADV style so that it’s much easier to read for hours on end (ADV style is the more typical UI design style of having a screen-space text box at the bottom of the screen). Previously, 3D speech bubbles were rendered at an angle and limited our camera composition as well. The diegetic text and the transitioning cameras are still very much features we’re keeping, of course!
Narrative
Writing the entire narrative script is almost done, and there’s a part of my heart that shrieks at that, because how can a story be done? But it will be, and it’s a warming feeling nowadays that, when I re-read through Solace State’s dialogue, I find myself enjoying it. I enjoy its whimsy, its self-reference, its allowance to let its characters breathe and live and make mistakes, and find joy.
We use Articy, an interactive storytelling management system to plug into Unity Engine for our branching story paths and many variables. This is just a small part of the larger picture!
Thank you for your continued support!
Healing from a difficult year also means reminding myself that I can have stress, but also moments of serenity. We are all actively trying our best! And I’ve got such a good team to remind me that I’m doing the best that I can, too.
Shout-outs to our team members who have put in the most hours the past year in Solace State’s development: Gabi’s been working with so much nuance on Solace State as Lead Programmer that they predict many of my questions. Reilly, Character Artist, builds ample intention into each pose and outfit that she creates. Ashley, Writer, helped me reframe the narrative pacing, from our writing room meetings to her first drafts. Lauren, 3D Artist, dives into creating many neighborhoods’ architectural assets and its painterly style. Seamus and Sunny, newest to the team, have moved us forward by leaps and bounds on level design and narrative content integration respectively. And Jayme makes sure we stay focused and capable in taking on our responsibilities every week as Project Manager.
Whenever I write, now and in the past, I’ve always circled around concepts of injustice and unfairness.
But perhaps the other thing I can’t help is to find the silver linings in every dark cave, and to make it into a conversation. And, what better way for Solace State to do that than through interactive storytelling driven by choice?
Peace and love,
Tanya