SPIRIT Devlog 2: Inspirations and art direction

Welcome to devlog 2, where I'll be talking about the setting and inspirations for the game, and also show off some artwork.

So I’m in my third year of my geography bachelor, and I’ve studied social work for one and a half years before that. It’s been four years of lectures, reading, group work, all kinds of exciting school projects, meeting and hanging out with wonderful people, parties, and of course, the various hardships that are just part of student life, both my own and those of my friends and classmates. Somewhere down the road of my geography studies, during a particularly gruelling group project, and after having played Disco Elysium (several times), it dawned on me that higher education could make for a great game setting, which could play with all kinds of character types, situations, and topics. Slowly, the idea of making an actual slice-of-life role-playing game set to the university I attended took form. 

Keep in mind, though, that while Spirit takes place at the University of Bergen, you won't find any of the university's students or faculty members in the game, nor is it an 'autobiography' of my time there –all the game characters are made from scratch, so to speak, and I also haven't put real-life events in the game.

I wanted it to have Disco Elysium’s deep and distinct characters, branching dialogue and storyline, and ‘skills’ that talked to you in an internal monologue, and NORCO’s 2D point-and-click system. Also, I love games that are tied to a particular place the developers have a clear connection to, like Embracelet, NORCO, and Tchia, and so Spirit will be deeply rooted in my hometown of Bergen. This nearly thousand year-old city is almost a character of itself: It’s a beautiful and quaint town with iconic mountains and fjord views, picturesque houses, a unique and distinct culture (to the point where its people will say they're not from Norway, but from Bergen), and most importantly, a big and lively student community, with people from all over the world and a wide range of facultues. Oh, and it also happens to be the rainiest city in Europe –not too many years ago we had three months straight of rainy days. However, since I also fell in love with Sogndal when I studied there, it felt fitting to make the main character come from there, as a kind of homage, if nothing else.

Above: An experiment with a photo filter.

The three main characters are Hanna, Maja, and Nora, who live together in a kollektiv, or flatshare, in downtown Bergen, and your skills, which form your inner monologue and help you overcome challenges, are Spirit, Butterfly, Heart, Reflection, and Hippocampus. I'll cover the gang and your skills in more detail in a future devlog.

As I mentioned, I’m currently using actual photos for scene backgrounds, while I use Midjourney to populate the scenes as well as for character portraits, and I’m pretty happy with the ones I have right now, even though several of the skill portraits need a bit more work. Here are some designs I've been considering  (please see the first dev log for my thoughts on the ethics of AI art generators):

Spirit.

Maja. 

Butterfly. 

Heart.

For the user interface, I drew inspiration from both NORCO and Disco Elysium. You’ll have an inventory with items, and I’m borrowing the dialogue sidebar from games like Shadowrun: Dragonfall, Disco, and NORCO. I also want the writing to be part dialogue, part narration, so things like the world around you, facial expressions, and body language will be described along with speech.

All in all, there are two major challenges right now. The first is writing out the full story I have in mind, with all the required scenes and interactions, all the while keeping it interesting and engaging. Spirit is a point-and-click RPG with few gameplay mechanics, which means the writing and story have to carry the game, and writing a slice-of-life game is essentially hard since you have to keep depictions of (mostly) ordinary everyday situations interesting and engaging! It's an exciting challenge, though, even though it's daunting, and so far I feel I'm pulling it off, and the story is also a nice mix of the whimsical and the deeply serious. The second challenge will be putting it all into Unity. Working out how to make a simple 2D point-and-click game has been manageable so far, and Articy comes with the ability to export dialogue to Unity, which is a huge time-saver. I'll keep working and learning and I'm looking forward to seeing it all start to come together. Eventually.