Hi, Bela here. Turns out, developing a game in your home studio can turn you into quite the hermit, and while I don’t actually mind holing up for long periods, I think it’s time to get back into the world and start bringing you new posts each week until the game ships!

Little Bug’s story begins when Nyah is pulled from her home in the city and finds herself in a desolate world full of expansive landscapes and surreal scenes rooted in nature. We want this place to feel as if it has always existed. We want it to feel familiar but new, peaceful yet terrifying.

This weekend 2 parts of Buddy System (Hana and I) went to Inyo National Forest with our dog. We went on some great hikes and took a bunch of reference photos for the game.

Above is Hana.

And this is me.

It was super cold and windy the whole time we were there. The wind was so strong in the night we kept waking up thinking our tent would fly away with all three of us in it. The whistling sounds were more like screams, filling the vastness of the night, making us feel like unwelcome guests in this inhuman world. In LA, you can see maybe 5 stars, but here, even in the freaky, freezing darkness, you could see thousands and thousands… and I thought, huh, a city girl like Nyah would be amazed by this too.

Considering the atmosphere we are hoping to develop in the world of Little Bug, our stay was perfect.

We pitched our tent at a place called Horseshoe Meadow, and the trails that wind off into endless backcountry beyond its car camping sites is what inspired the Demo’s alpine atmosphere.

In the full game, we are calling this beautifully strange place ‘The Crossroads’. An intersection of many paths in space and time, one is not meant to stay there long term. It is a place that is meant to be passed through. This realm of the game will reference the natural landscapes of California. From the deserts to the alpine lakes, the extremes of our state test us like The Crossroads will test Nyah.