Embedded Files
Star Shower Petrichor is a pitch for a 2D narrative-driven turn-based RPG. Players will explore a fantasy tower, solving puzzles and engaging in combat all while experiencing an immersive narrative.
While on summer vacation, three college friends are accidentally transported into a “alternate reality bubble” based on an RPG video game called “Wish of Polaris” they played together. Guided by the game’s mascot character Galatea, they attempt to reach the original good ending, but due to each character’s own internal and external conflicts, end up distorting the game world to match their own desires and insecurities.
Characters
Characters
Each character has a corresponding card suit theme. Card suits would act as an elemental weakness system for the game.
Final lineup:
Early experimental doodles:
Annette (♥ Heart)
Annette (♥ Heart)
Annette is a sentimental avoidant type. Struggling with the transition to adult life and afraid of the future, she clings to her fading childhood. She's also something of a sociable, friendly fixer type - preferring to help other people with their problems than focus on her own. Therefore, being presented with Fantasyland Funtimes is like an epic win for her. Solve the tangible problem of RPG boss AND avoid reality AND get to play my favorite childhood game in real life? Why would I WANT to go back to reality?? And her arc would be sort of about learning to face your problems and understand that nostalgia is a liar. The present is built on the past, but one cannot overtake the other.
Outfit mood board
Outfit explorations
Annette’s design is meant to be cutesy and round to represent her friendly nature and saccharinely nostalgic outlook.
Color tests
Kat (♠ Spade)
Kat (♠ Spade)
Kat is the epitome of that dog in a burning house "this is fine" meme. Unstable past, thinks she has no future, and is terrified of losing her friendships because this is the first time she's ever felt like she belonged somewhere. Anxiety is constantly simmering beneath the surface, but she puts up a chill, sarcastic, funny-guy facade because she doesn't want to confront that fear. Casts her own desires aside because being unfulfilled is more familiar and "safer" than asking for things. This comes to a head when one of the other party members admits they're leaving and Kat is like "Oh god I’m losing something that mattered to me AGAIN?!" and implodes a little. Her arc is along the lines of "it's going to be different but it's going to be okay. If you never ask for help things will never get better, so ASK FOR HELP. Change is not inherently negative."
Outfit mood board
Outfit explorations
Out of the entire cast, Kat puts the least amount of effort into her outfit. She avoids her own problems, and that apparently includes “getting a better wardrobe.”
Color tests
Maeve (♣ Clubs)
Maeve (♣ Clubs)
Maeve is a creative-type workaholic who's very critical of herself. Didn't have a terrible childhood, but didn't really have fun because she couldn’t connect with her peers. She coped by looking forwards to a "better future" - a strategy she's kept using in spite of the fact she already has a lot of what she wants (close friends, a good school, a major she enjoys, etc). Ignores her past and puts all her current energy towards min-maxing what'll help her most in the long term - often at the cost of her health and relationships. She's chasing personal goals that don't actually ever leave her fulfilled because the goalpost keeps moving. Her arc would be something along the lines of learning to slow down, stop trying to please the void, and appreciate what she already has as opposed to what she could get or be.
Outfit mood board
Outfit explorations
Maeve actively attempts to dress like a pretentious art student/academic type. She puts way too much effort into everything, and that INCLUDES her wardrobe.
Color tests
Galatea (♦ Diamond)
Galatea (♦ Diamond)
Galatea is the mascot character of Polaris’s Wish. The curator of the Tower of Stars as well as its first denizen. Responsible for its citizens, upkeep, and research into its mysteries. A very hopeful, friendly, and helpful person, but subtly guarded. Suppresses her own problems and feels personally guilty whenever something goes wrong. Perpetually curious about what lies beyond the Tower’s borders, but fears change too much to explore those ideas. Has an arc about finding her own identity beyond the "guardian and guide” role Wish of Polaris’s narrative defines her as. Named after the Greek myth of Galatea and Pygmalion - the story of a sculptor who fell in love with his own statue (Galatea) and prayed to Aphrodite to bring her to life. Also because the “Gala-” part of her name sounds vaguely similar to “Galaxy” and she has star motifs.
Outfit mood board
Outfit explorations
Everything is pointy and diamond shaped, but not jagged in a scary or unapproachable way. Star motifs and fantasy outfits.
Color tests
Mascot form explorations
Environments
Environments
The Tower
The Tower
A massive spire that scrapes the sky stands tall in the center of a lake. The still water reflects it perfectly. Its base is in pristine condition, but the higher up you get, the more things start to crumble. It’s far bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside.
Initial thumbnails
Spire ideas
The spire reappears again twice in the game, so I thought it might be a good idea to start with a spire design I liked and then work downwards.
Loose tower ideas based on favorite spire design
Final sketch and illustration
Level 1: Meadow Town
Level 1: Meadow Town
The lowest level of the tower. A sprawling flower field home to tiny creatures born from fallen stars that people wished on. The whole area slopes slightly with most of the townsfolk inhabiting the flattest part closest to the tower’s entrance. A door and staircase to the upper levels sits at the highest point of this area. Light filters in through the tower’s archways.
Sketches and thumbnails
Final illustration
The player would start in the town in the bottom left before working their way up to the middle levels. The player will solve puzzles in the windmill area, engage in combat encounters in the forested area, and finally reach the level’s top. The tower at the top is actually an elevator which will take you to the next level.
Level 2: Steamworks
Level 2: Steamworks
The middle of the tower and its most complicated section. While there’s normally a direct route from here to the observatory, it’s caved in thanks to shadowy monsters roaming the area. Guess you’ll have to find another way through the debris…
The steamworks are what keeps the lower level running. It circulates drinkable water throughout the entire tower and powers anything that can’t be powered through magic alone.
Initial sketches
Final illustration
The general idea is the player will start at the bottom left corner after emerging from the elevator tower at the end of the first level. The “normal” door for this area is blocked off, so the player will have to go in through a water grate and solve puzzles to lower the overall water level in order to reach the next upper floor.
Level 3: Observatory
Level 3: Observatory
The next-to-highest level of the tower. Full of towers and astronomical devices designed to observe stars, constellations, and meteor showers. Contains information about the tower and its citizens, as well as the prophecy about saving the tower, though some of the text is written in a language you can’t read… Currently a total mess thanks to monsters roaming the area. Some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved.
Sketch
Final illustration
The core gameplay of this area would involve going to the 5 tower offshoots and solving puzzles in those in order to lower an elevator in the main room which would bring you the next boss arena. There are 5 puzzle rooms total - one suited to each character, and then one extra which requires everyone’s combined skills.
Level 4: Tower's Top
Level 4: Tower's Top
The very top of the tower has been overtaken by a black hole creature - the embodiment of fear itself. The area is crumbling beneath its weight. As the pretense of the “story” breaks down when you “win” against the boss, the tower breaks down along with it…
Area and final boss sketches
Final illustration
No puzzles here. Just a single combat encounter.
Level -1: Merged Hometown
Level -1: Merged Hometown
After the Tower collapses, the area sinks and distorts to correspond to Annette’s wishes since she’s the person in the tower with the strongest desire. The half-sunken remains of the opening area meadow village merge with Annette’s memories of her own hometown. The sky and sea have flipped. Fish swim through the air. Both the location and the characters are literally drowning in their own nostalgia.
Sketch
Dusk version
The player would start in the top right of the map and then move towards the playground in the bottom left as things slowly begin to flood.
Flooded version
Level -2: Unending Subway
Level -2: Unending Subway
The area based on Kat’s memories. A subway that seems to extend onto infinity suspended in a snowy void. Each subway car contains something different reflecting some of her past experiences. The cars further away from the head of the train are more normal and things get more ominous the closer you get to the front (reflecting her own anxieties about the future). You can’t return to past cars once you’ve exited them. You can only move forward - for better or worse.
Subway car sketches
Final illustration
The player would start in the bottom right and then slowly move to. the front cabin.
Level -3: Glitched Game
Level -3: Glitched Game
The area based on Maeve’s desires. The game boiled down to its bare essentials to the point of breaking. Maeve is so intent on “Winning at any cost/reaching the end goal” that everything else cracks under the weight. Surreal and glitchy. Actually re-defeating the simulacra of the final boss doesn’t help either, and with each “battle won,” things break down until it’s impossible to progress at all. Symbolic for burnout.
Sketch
Final illustration
Level -4: Flooded Tower Ruins
Level -4: Flooded Tower Ruins
The world’s (and Galatea’s) attempt to return to the status quo now that the trio’s have confronted their interpersonal issues. But everyone and everything has changed so much that only the flooded top of the observatory remains intact. Viewed from this angle, its pillars seem remarkably similar to a birdcage. Galatea has to define who she is outside of the role the game’s narrative ascribed to her.
Color tests
Final illustration
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