Since the end of our Kickstarter campaign we have been busy with lots of business-related things, but we have also jumped back into art development. In this devlog we thought we might share a bit of the art we have been working on and talk about some of our design sensibilities.

As with everything else in Lacuna Passage we really want to inject a strong realistic foundation for the art. We collect massive amounts of reference images for even the smallest assets and for most assets we create detailed concept art as well. Using elements directly from our references is very important to us in maintaining a level of realism while our concepts allow us to “remix” certain aspects and create our own unique visual style. This visual style is especially important considering that many of the assets we are creating are things that don’t have modern technological analogues.

The Hermes and Heracles missions in the game are missions that happen in the future, so we have to project forward what technologies we might have based on the technologies that have already existed and ones proposed for a manned mission to Mars. Our goal is to have elements that feel recognizable and at the same time new.

One simple aspect of these space exploration technologies that we have changed is the color scheme. We have opted to use a blue/grey color scheme which is different than almost any other color palettes for previous NASA missions. It’s an extremely simple change that tends to modernize many designs and make them feel fresh and new. Not only that, but it helps us create a complementary color scheme between the blues of the equipment and the red-oranges of our Martian landscapes.

Over the next few months we plan to really solidify our visual style as we move on to designing some of the most important assets in the game - our landing capsules, habitats, and rovers. We hope that you like the direction we are taking with the visual identity of Lacuna Passage. You will be seeing lots more art in future devlogs.