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Platformer Elfscape: Ancestors is telling the story of a temple Guardian. She is asleep, waiting for the prophecy to come true - when the Chosen One shall descend underground, he'll fight a victorious battle against a Demon. One day, the Guardian is awakened, and she quickly realises the Chosen one is nowhere in sight. She needs to find him, and quickly - her life energy depends on it. Elfscape: Ancestors brings 24 levels, distributed into 6 environments, through which you'll be accompanied by an epic story told through visual-novel-like elements. Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council (www.fpu.sk)

Post news Report RSS (#22 Dev Diary) Ancient prophecies & temple walls

How was the prophecy created and what's special about the temple walls.

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Ancient prophecies & temple walls

Dev Diary 22


Hello!

Today we'll introduce you to the game's first location. Start of the game takes place in a temple chamber with a massive wall relief. The relief's theme is an ancient prophecy, which the inhabitants of the underground city religiously believe in.

Prophecy relief on the background wall, gate to the temple on the right
wall relief


The chamber background is created by one seamlessly repeating tile made from intertwined lines. We tried to create not visibly standing out patterns to avoid bringing focus to individual tiles and breaking the illusion of one complex and smooth background.

In the right corner you see the one tile, in the big picture it's seamlessly looped into background
Background tile


The relief was created in multiple steps, starting with something only vaguely resembling a painting.

Step one: design in MS Paint by our game designer
Relief design step 1


Step two: quick sketch by our artist
Relief design step 2


Step three: final outline design by our artist
Relief design step 3


Style of the relief is a unique style, inspired by egyptian hieroglyphs. This graphics style is only used for the Prophecy relief and the Grand temple. From the in game point of view, both of them are very ancient, probably dating back to the very first inhabitants of the underground caves. The relief could be created using some long forgotten technologies. Or maybe there was some help involved from the higher beings living in the clouds?

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