Only 2 Days Left Until Grand Festival! Back Before The Glitz And Glam... Old Hopes And Worries Are Now

Only 2 days left until Grand Festival! Back before the glitz and glam... old hopes and worries are now treasured memories.

Team Past, are you ready to make history?

x3

in the files, the splatfest printer is called "God"

Ay. Ay! Ay. Ay. (It's me, Big Man, letting you know the lobby is quite a ways away from the stages at the Grand Festival. You'll want to take the free shuttle to get to your matches! Or just use the main menu. That works too.)

August 25, 2008 by mocha

I understand that Psychopomp was born out of necessity due to the policies put in place by Unity, but alot of the story and designs for environments and characters are incredibly thought out. Were these ideas retooled from previously scrapped projects or ones you worked on before the Unity debacle (Mechana/Dreamwild)? What are your influences on some of the more esoteric concepts/mystical oddities within the stories of your games? Also, why is the moon's design one of the main unifying factors in your games? (Atleast that i know of, I only played Dashbored, Dreamwild, and Psychopomp.)

I had the idea for Psychopomp a few months before the Unity policy debacle, so when that all happened, it ended up being more of an opportunity to revisit that character and idea again (though at that point it was really just the one character design and the idea of the helmet)

For the most part, the ideas from Psychopomp weren't borrowed from my other games. There are a few however. In the 2014 early development version of DashBored (Then called "Drive") the second level was a factory run by a giant severed head. You would have to mercy kill the head to continue on. This was removed pretty quickly from the game, but I wanted to revisit it, because it made one of my highschool friends really uncomfortable. The head came back ten years later for Psychopomp, and the design is even taken from Drive.

(The old sprites. I didn't really know how to make digital art at this point)

The King of Mercury and King of all Dogs were originally from an idea for a separate video game. However, I really liked them, and I didn't want to wait to have to wait for years to be able to potentially make something with them in it, so I worked them into the story of Psychopomp.

(The original drawings that would become the King of all Dogs and King of Mercury. The King of All Dogs inner face here is inspired by traditional Haida art. This influence was dropped for Psychopomp because it didn't fit the grimy artstyle, but I'd like to bring it back in the future.)

I grew up in a household surrounded by a lot of spiritualism and various eastern philosophies. A lot of my youth was spent in spiritual shops and various shrines of different denominations. I ended up with a lot of esoteric concepts in my head and came to really appreciate a lot of the various spiritual aesthetics of the world. It's hard to come to terms with a world that's brimming with so many concepts, many of which contradict and attack each other, and that spiritual anxiety makes up a lot of my feelings in Psychopomp.

As for the moon, all I can say is: Note who it appears to, and when and where it appears. The moon is watching.

Thanks for the ask! This is a really great question! I hope you enjoyed the games, and I hope you'll enjoy what I have in store for the future!