Hi everyone, and welcome to another Dandelion Void devlog. This is part one of a two-part post. Today we're showcasing the different categories of environments that can be found in Dandelion Void, along with some new items. Next time we will be showcasing some new environmental areas within these categories!

As a quick housekeeping note, we’d like to thank everyone for your patience with the irregular devlog schedule last month; we have been all-hands-on-deck on (yet another) exciting announcement that we aren't able to talk about quite just yet. Watch this space!

There's a lot going on in our game’s setting; the Pergola is a retrofuturistic generation ship that launched in the 1970’s. It is now derelict, overgrown with plants, and inhabited by survivors living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. 

Our three "environmental palettes" from left to right: original generation ship decor, the encroaching jungle, and improvised survivor furniture!

These different components of our setting each have their own visual identity, and depending on where you are in the ship you might experience them in different proportions. I like to think about each category as an "environmental palette," each of which that can be combined in different ways to create unique environments. Let's go over each one in a little more detail!

The Pergola wasn't always an overgrown derelict, and part of our task as worldbuilders is to define how the ship looked before everything went South. Original generation ship decor can be split into two broad sub-categories:

The feature that distinguishes generation ships from other sci-fi vessels is that they are built to fulfill every need of the crew for their entire lifetimes, including housing, childcare, workplaces, meals, storage, resource distribution, socializing, recreation, etc. Designing a generation ship is as much about civic planning as it is engineering!

Don't let the futuristic sliding door fool you: people lived, worked, and played on this ship!

Many sci-fi horror franchises showcase cold, industrial spaceship interiors. By contrast, the Pergola was cozy and beautiful in its heyday. We represent this with warm color palettes, midcentury modern furniture aesthetics, and heavy uses of materials like fabric and wood.

This tweet comes up in our art planning meetings on a weekly basis

As we’ll discuss in our next post, domestic and civilian environments are a big focus for our art team right now!

Despite its creature comforts, the Pergola is still a high-tech spaceship! In addition to areas directly related to its function as a spacefaring vessel – engine reactors, airlocks, EVA ports, etc. – the Pergola also needs utility areas that you would find in any modern city, like factories and sewage centers. These areas create darker, colder spaces to make the human-centric ones feel all the more cozy.

A player characters stands at the edge of a reactor cooling pool, next to crates of spent fuel rods

In the time since the Pergola went derelict, a hostile jungle has taken over. Plants, algae, and other overgrowth are how we establish the age of the environment!

Our plants are procedurally placed using a noise algorithm, so you might find them growing in different places on different playthroughs. With this said, we also have some manual control over what gets to grow where (and modders will too!)

The ponic grasses are a cosmopolitan species[en.wikipedia.org], meaning they can be found in almost any environment that can support them. These hardy, fast going plants descend from hydroponic grasses that were once used for air filtration. They now cover much of the Pergola and serve as the perfect camouflage for uproots.

Other plant species are endemic[en.wikipedia.org] only to a small region of the ship, like these grain plants which emit a toxic pollen. Having plant species that are restricted to particular areas adds both visual and gameplay variety as you explore!

“Survivor improvisations” are environmental elements built by the hunter-gatherer descendants of the Pergola's original crew, including you the player! By using both human-made and plant-based resources, this third environmental palette ties the first two together.

The people who built the Pergola had access to deep resources and mass production manufacturing. By contrast, their descendants have to make do with what’s on hand, and they have to make everything by hand.

One of the ways we achieve a “hunter-gatherer” look for player-crafted furniture is to make sure that the ingredient resources are visible in the finished product. For instance, this storage basket is clearly made of the stems and leaves of ponic grass:

Left: concept art for a woven ponic-leaf bin, created by collaging reference images in Photoshop. Note that the blurring and distortion come from this compositing process -- no AI here, or anywhere else in the project!

Right: final 3D art for the woven ponic bin

As another example, this improvised "spit roast" is built from a number of junk items that can be found elsewhere in the map

Left: the mop, wire spool, bucket, and metal shelf can each be found as independent objects

Right: together, they can be combined into a crude campfire spit!

Most humans avoid setting foot in the Virgo module at all costs, but every now and then you’ll find evidence of another poor soul who tried to scratch out a life here. Our current build has what we call “survivor rooms,” tiny hovels where a long-dead survivor set up a small base.

Survivor rooms will be mostly made of items that you can craft yourself, but they may also have unique antiques and keepsakes from their original owners. As with any abandoned environment, survivor rooms present a great storytelling opportunity!

I hope you enjoyed this review of the different visual elements of Dandelion Void! Next time we'll use this lens of environmental palettes to show off some new environment art, with a particular focus on new domestic and civilian environments.

Until then, take care and please have a great week!

- Robin and the Manzanita Interactive team

Hi everyone! Welcome to another Dandelion Void devlog.

Today we’re talking about a hotly debated new asset we’ve (temporarily?) added to the build, along with some general reflections on horror, tone, and when humor enhances or inhibits player terror.

But first, we'd like to direct your attention to the MrAtomicDuck’s second stream of Dandelion Void -- featuring a ton of never before seen content! If you missed it live, the VOD is now available:

Our story begins with one of the most satisfying tasks in game development: programmer art replacement!

A few months ago we added new status effects, including indigestion and (un)happiness. As is common in development, we programmed a first version of these before we had time to make new icons, so Robin (yours truly) stubbed in some temp art.

These served their purpose for playtesting, but are obviously a bit of an eyesore. Finally, last week Brian was able to make proper icons for each of the stats.

Our style for icons resembles "science textbook" illustrations, and where possible we like to incorporate relevant pieces of human anatomy. A stomach was already taken by the hunger stat...

Top: hunger, health, temperature, boredom.
Bottom: exertion, fatigue, thirst

...so we went with gurgling stomach acid for indigestion:

We struggled more with happiness. A straightforward smiley face clashed with the visceral, grimy tone of the other icons:

while a distended pair of floating lips looked… odd 

Finally, Brian asked: if we're representing stats with pieces of human anatomy, what is the anatomical equivalent of happiness? One answer is the humble dopamine molecule:

With this molecular inspiration, Roland whipped up a concept for Brian to translate into a lo-fi icon

Left: first attempts at the icon. Right: our current iteration for an "unhappy" status!

This has been a controversial asset amongst the team. Personally, I love the little guy. But Brian had to be convinced to even keep it in for a simple playtest, even though he was the one who finalized the icon! Let’s run through the pros and cons of this glum little fellow:

Cons:

• It is a much less intuitive symbol for “happiness” than a simple smiley

• It calls a lot of attention to itself

• It reads as an explicit “joke”

Pros:

• It’s the best match for our science textbook / human anatomy theme

• Happiness isn’t an urgent status effect, so it’s ok if the player has to mouse over it to learn what it does the first time

• We didn’t love any of the other options

• We think it’s pretty goofy!

To be clear: we don’t know yet if we’re keeping the icon or not. But I found it interesting that the icon reading as a “joke” could be considered both as a positive and a negative. This sparked a discussion amongst the team on the appropriate level of humor for the game!

Horror and comedy are cousin genres. Each relies on a cycle of emotional tension that slowly builds and then releases all at once. The goal of both is to surprise the player and provoke an involuntary reaction – a scream, a laugh, or sometimes both. This is one reason why directors like Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger can make the jump from sketch comedy to blockbuster horror films. 

Comedy and horror can also be mixed effectively, but you do have to be mindful of the genre expectations you’ve established. If you show a banana peel slip in an intense horror film, or a sudden grisly death in a lighthearted comedy, your viewer would feel that the tone of the work has been compromised.

One useful device to navigate this problem is distinguishing between explicit and implicit comedy.

Comedy is explicit when it is clear to the player that the game is intentionally making a joke. 

• In Resident Evil 6, the grizzled soldier Leon can take a break by going down a playground slide or bouncing on a panda spring ride

• Fallout is a series with horror elements that makes extensive use of explicit comedy: from the wacky dialogue, to 1950s parody material, to all of the funny little drawings of Vault Boy. 

• Lethal company has a honkable clown horn, perfect for breaking the tension or annoying your friends!

Just a normal screenshot from a horror game: Resident Evil 6, captured by IGN

Comedy is implicit when the player is delivered a humorous situation in a way that seems accidental, emergent, or organic to the world. Note that the designers are often trying just as hard to be funny (or to give you the tools to make your own funny situation), but tonally they maintain plausible deniability

• Lethal Company is full of implicit comedy. If you watch your friend navigate expertly between monsters and booby traps, only to be cut off mid-sentence as they fall to their death on an easy jump, you'll probably laugh! Not because the game told a joke, but because the game created an organically funny situation.

• In Project Zomboid, Brian and I once planned a mission to rescue some lawn flamingos from a neighborhood where a large zombie horde had gathered. After discussing our strategy, Brian drove into the horde, dropped me off to die, and sped away.
  It turns out we each had completely different understandings of the plan -- I thought we were driving through and laying on the horn, while he thought I was jumping in for an extraction mission. Either would have worked if we had properly communicated, but the misunderstanding proved lethal... and extremely funny.

• Almost every horror game features implicit comedy, because one of the most reliable formulas for a good laugh is misfortune + surprise!

In general, implicit comedy can be used in horror content without compromising the seriousness of a game's authorial tone – in fact, it’s almost impossible to make a game without it. On the other hand, the more you use explicit comedy, the closer you get to the “horror comedy” label. This isn’t inherently bad, but it’s a choice you want to be deliberate about.

So, where does this all leave us?

To start, we consider Dandelion Void to be a science fiction game with a horror atmosphere, not just a “horror game,” so we have some flexibility with our tone. But we take our setting and worldbuilding quite seriously: the Pergola is an eerie overgrown ship with a tragic backstory. The setting has some goofy elements – walking plants, eclectic cabin-fevered ancestors, etc. – but we’re pretty far from the gonzo anything-goes worlds of some other post-apocalyptic franchises.

Cause of death: one filthy bed. Implicit comedy!

Using the above device, let's start with some examples of implicit comedy in Dandelion Void:

• Just as I was settling down for bed one night, I realized my bed was covered in algae and I couldn’t pass the night due to my Fussy Sleeper trait. I had to make a woefully underequipped voyage into the dangerous nighttime jungle, took a few hits from a group of uproots, and bled out on the floor – all in search of a simple cleaning sponge.

• After contracting a \[redacted] illness, I managed to find myself some medicine – but it gave me so much indigestion that I threw up the contents of my stomach, and I subsequently starved to death

• Our colleague Roland once had to remove his underwear before he had inventory room to pick up a furniture item!

  • Note: we’re working on making worn clothing items no longer take up inventory slots – but until then, it leads to some pretty funny moments.

Because these are all implicit, none of these funny moments come at the expense of Dandelion Void's horror atmosphere.

When it comes to explicit comedy, our policy is that the game is allowed to make “jokes” as long as they are (a) fully explicable through our worldbuilding, and/or (b) understated enough that they don’t call excessive attention to themselves. (b) is highly subjective, of course, leading to lots of discussions about where the line is!

Here’s a few examples of explicit comedy in Dandelion Void:

• Many item descriptions are written in a spaced-out tone, offering “shower thought” musings about everyday objects

• Many findable lore files describe humorous events – see the “festival of pliers” from the most recent MrAtomicDuck stream

• Traits like “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem” let the player create quirky, silly characters

• There’s just something a little bit funny about watching plants run around and chase you, or even funnier, one of your friends!

Robin has been the only one on the Manz-Int team bold enough to take this trait in playtesting. Will our players be braver?

The nice thing about a systems-driven game with expansive worldbuilding is that there’s room for a little bit of everything when it comes to tone: the trick is to find the ideal ratios, and make sure that no single element detracts from the overall experience.

As for the dopamine happiness icon, it’s definitely in the realm of explicit comedy. Does it hit the right level? We’re still not sure! It’s also possible that the humor will be fine, but it will create more clarity issues than we can justify.

We look forward to gauging reactions in our internal playtesting, and we’d love to hear your opinions as well. Until then, take care everybody and have a great week!

- Robin and the Manzanita Interactive team