From there we just combined those biomes with the fantasy elements we wanted, based on the lore of the Deep Woods – junky TVs and arcade machines that have fallen through from our world, magical plants and animals, and exaggerated proportions and features to draw awe and wonder.īy far the biggest hurdle all throughout the production was Spriteling AI and behavior. You also might think we stretched the concept a little bit with Frostfields, going straight from green forests to snowy plains, but that’s actually not too far off from reality in some parts of Oregon and Washington, where a bunch of us are from! We exaggerate how quickly the transitions can happen of course, but for the most part, we tried to draw inspiration and guidance from our actual surroundings in this part of the world. But we do still try to get a lot of visual variety out of the direction, hence the stormy coasts of Crystalfall and the moody purples of Wispwagon. That’s why most of the game is variations on different kinds of forests. The game is set in the Pacific Northwest of the United States (albeit in a sort of magical version of it), so we wanted it to feel like you were just naturally progressing through various ecosystems and climates that might actually exist in that area, adjacent to each other. One thing we knew from the beginning is that we wanted all the environments to feel somewhat natural. Plus, lots of players really seem to like it! In the end, while I think we could have improved the crafting loop a bit with more time, I’m still very proud of it. And sort of only enhances that notion that the player characters are more of a support role, while the Spritelings are doing most of the actual action. On the other hand, I think the “Tonics” were very successful! Being able to craft these magical potions that boost your Spritelings’ traits in different ways compliments the game’s loop very well. (We actually still have hopes of doing some rebalancing here in a future update, so who knows!) speed boost, kick strength) to incentivize them in other ways, but it’s still not perfect. Thus it can make all the craftable “Meals” feel a little less useful – why do I need to craft healing items if I never need healing? We added extra attributes to the meals (e.g. For example, in a game where most of the combat centers around Spritelings versus enemies, the player characters simply aren’t ever taking that much damage.

The wild at heart video game