Here's a short story behind the visual style of our LD#49 entry, Divine Intervention.

The very first mock-up was for a game about using your keyboard to stabilize complex machinery (or something like that, the idea wasn't very clear at that point):

As we generated new ideas and directions, we decided to simplify the presentation of the “subject” so we could create much more of them, ranging from everyday objects to abstract ideas, all controlled through similar interactions (we didn't quite pull that off in the end, because time). I wanted to have an analog-feeling display and a relatively primitive diagram on it, with just enough fidelity to highlight arising “problems”.

So I started putting colored blobs on the canvas sloppily. We were coming up with new ideas, and I kept sketching them in and scratching them without any intention of keeping any visual aspect of it. We added and removed stuff like buttons, post-it notes on the wall, scanlines on the screen, a huge green book titled “MAN UAL” appeared at some point, and by the end of the session we got this:

With that, @yogurtthehorse started coding, and it was my job to render the game screen using the ideas in the mock-up. It was my plan to reimagine it all from scratch. But thanks to the magic of the PICO-8 palette I used, something about the sketch just seemed to feel right. Idk, everything you draw with PICO-8 colors just pops for some reason. So instead I basically rendered it again in higher resolution, adding more details and actually struggling to preserve the very feeling of “sloppiness” I initially planned to get rid of.

And I ended up with the final result:

The objects appear to be made from clay, and some people started pointing out that it almost looks like The Neverhood — a one of a kind adventure game released back in 1996. I'm not gonna lie, I do see the resemblance:

If you've never heard about The Neverhood, I highly recommend you familiarize yourself with this legendary game. Its style, humor, and depth are unparalleled, and the amount of love and effort the developers put into it is insane. You might have realized by now that it's a whole world made entirely from clay! Even accidentally creating something that reminds people of The Neverhood makes me happy :)

Thanks for reading! And if you haven't played our entry yet, give it a go — we'll be glad to know what you think.