Hi everyone, we hope everyone has been doing well! Today we wanted to share some inspirations and references we had while working on Path of Kami.
We did several moodboards for color palettes, references, inspirations and more. To see the actual images you can see the original post on our website (unfortunately we aren’t able to post photos here.)
Big Indie Pitch
We are also excited to share that this week we'll be participating in Big Indie Pitch!
The Big Indie Pitch sees indie developers engage in a speed-dating-styled pitching competition for fame (oh, and a share of a promotional prize package worth $thousands).
It’s a fun but hotly contested event that has proved a genuine game-changer for teams in the past. We are excited to have this opprotunity to participate, wish us luck!
Okay now for inspo on Path of Kami...
Gameplay
Gameplay wise we took a lot of inspiration from various Zelda games, Journey and Abzu. We knew we wanted the game to be a casual and relaxing experience but still being engaging hence the simple puzzles :)
We also wanted to do lots of environmental storytelling like journey/abzu, our wisp friend will share a lot of lore with us in game but you’ll notice through collectibles and art in the environment will also be sharing tid bits of lore with you as well!
Art
Path of Kami utilizes a 3D stylized watercolor-esque art style that has two different aesthetics, one for the human world and the other for the spirit world. The human world contains hues of white, yellow, green, reds and browns while the spirit world has hues of blues, purples, and neon-like elements.
In the human world we seek to emphasise the main characteristics of each season, warm saturated colors during spring/summer displayed in nature populated levels and desaturated white/grey cool tones in more desolate environments for winter.
The spirit world seeks to express a dream-like ethereal full of nature environments through cool saturated tones as well as displaying a richer amount of air particles and small emissive fairy-like elements.
Watercolor/Painterly Look
We wanted the game to have a watercolor/painterly look and we took several references from a games like Okami, GRIS and Child of Light. We didn’t want anything too inky like Okami and GRIS is able to pull off the watercolor look really well because its a 2D game. We decided to go with a mix of GRIS and Child of Light but in 3D.
Hope this gives you an insight on some of the inspirations behind the game!
Cheers!
- Captilight Team