Good evening my fellow Kindred,

It’s the 13th of October, so it’s a Dev Diary day! On top of that, it’s a Friday, so I hope you are safe and sound… if you care about this stuff. Avoid black cats crossing your way! It’ll be double bad luck in one day!

As for what I want to talk about this month, it is why we chose to go with realistic graphics instead of something stylized. We have comic-like portraits in-game after all.

Yes, we do. And at the start, we wanted to go with stylized graphics. It is more forgiving and gives you the possibility to develop your own style which can make your game recognizable over so many other games you can find out there. As cartoons show - even with a style similar to children's cartoons you can be aimed at older audiences than children and be successful. Everything lies in the content and context.

As for our game, we quickly dropped the idea of stylizing. In my opinion, it would go well in the World of Darkness since it is a grotesque and warped image of the world we are living in, existing in parallel with our own. But… well… the problem with stylization is that not everyone can “connect” with it. Only the artist understands fully why he is using the style he chose over others. Also, we would be somewhat bound to what was used during the time we are aiming, and believe me… making everything in the style of that time would be hard. And not only for me but also for anyone trying to play the game. Neons and saturated colors, wild geometric shapes look great on your craziest shirt in the wardrobe but could be hard for the eyes in RPG games which you’ll play for hours. It could also ruin the immersion.

The best RPGs I’ve played had realistic or semi-realistic graphics (guys, you know we are talking about fantasy settings right? Let’s not ruin the Consensus). It was far easier for me to immerse myself in the graphics where NPCs, items, and locations were somewhat similar to things I can find in day-to-day life. In the case of stylized graphics, I’ve always got a feeling that I live in someone’s else dream or story. Not my own since this is not how I look at and interpret things surrounding me. I couldn't “connect” and find myself living in the world present in the game.

What’s also important we’ll be using real-life locations. The similarity could be lost if we would use stylized graphics. What we want is to take you on the streets of Las Vegas in 1986. Similar to what the other famous franchise is doing with historical locations. Will we have notes and some other interesting facts about those locations? Perhaps.

From other news - did you know that our Visual Lead decided to participate in WODtober? You can find artwork on our Discord server - all of the prompts are drawn through the prism of the game so you can learn a little more about the the game plot itself if you are observant and careful!

Also don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Patreon, and Twitter (or X? I’m never sure).

Stay safe during this unlucky day that started this all and see you next month!