Game
Muse Genkaroku

3 years ago

The thumbnail of the game's itch.io version.

Simply just a modification of the original thumbnail.


Instead of a detailed Mari image in "red grayscale", this one features a silhouette of Mari similar to silhouettes on main Touhou games' box art.

The cross-shaped brooch is perhaps the most striking feature of the silhouette, stand out of the silhouette's dark colors.

There are "spirit butterflies" like usual, but I deliberately made 9 butterflies for some reason: To represent that Yuri is an angel (Yuri is most commonly associated with this design of butterflies; and angels are known to categorized into nine "choirs"; and Yuri (as well as the type of butterfly that is commonly associated with Yuri) seems to make prevalent appearances inside Mari's Dream World), and to symbolize the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit (its purpose in the theme of the game? Um... There's a bit of hint that Mari is struggle to gain self-control over her grief, as the visual elements that supposedly derived from her traumatic experiences keep appearing regularly in her dreams... (It's hard to tell what exactly is going on inside her dreams that could be related to her "quest" to gain self-control over her grief, since this might spoil the whole game's experience)).

The heavy theology and spiritual motifs of the thumbnail's design is enough to make me have a brainf*** if I keep thinking of their meanings for too long. All of the visual motif s**t is almost impossible for newcomers to interpret what is the game's meaning, but despite that, they can still enjoy the game's graphics and its Buff Card mechanic, while still not know what are the symbolisms of the game's visual motifs (similar to most newcomers of Yume Nikki, who cannot interpret most surrealistic and Mesoamerican imagery in the game (except for some who interpret the decorative character KyuuKyuu-kun as a dick (or phallic imagery), or things like that)). Still, I will make the game's graphics look as stunning as possible, while still make it full of brainf***ing religious, theological, spiritual and surrealistic motifs, to make newcomers enjoy the design of the graphics and its simple gameplay. Remember, for newcomers, you cannot jump into interpreting a game's true meaning and motifs at the start, but instead, enjoy the games' visual art style and gameplay mechanics first!

Overall, the game's visual motifs' meaning might be difficult for new players of the game to interpret, but the game's simple gameplay mechanics (just revolving around exploration of the game's world (which is an open world) and collecting items that could give you special abilities or just changing your appearance) and the visually stunning game visuals makes the game still enjoyable for newcomers, even if they know little to nothing about the meaning of the game or its visual motifs!



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Happy #WIPWednesday!

Are you working on a game?

Making some art?

Practicing a song?

Something else?

Tell us in the comments!

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