Hey everyone,

First of all, I've got some very good news. I managed to pull myself out of the little design block I was having and am now 2/3 done with the game's second level. Now that doesn't sound like much, but the game's second level is much bigger than the first. To give you a bit of extra context here, the first level is set within the ruins of an old village located outside of the city of Niravasi. The second level, however, is set within the ancient ruin of an old Stepwell. Obviously there's a lot more to it than that, but I just wanted to let you know how things were going. Speaking of how things are going, let's talk a little about how the game's going to look.

Dim World: Bright Game

"Of Light and Dark."

While Niravasi is first and foremost a Horror game, that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be devoid of any striking/significant colour usage. A key design philosophy with this game was to indulge greatly in using bright and contrasting colours. In India, the use of vibrant colours played an incredibly important role in shaping the country's culture and I wanted to reflect that within Niravasi. A big part of this comes from the fact that Niravasi was heavily inspired by the sacred Indian City of Varanasi, which is both a city of vibrant colours and mourning the passing of the dead.

With these strong themes juxtaposed onto each other, I wanted to create a vibrant world filled with unspeakable horrors and that started as a solid foundation for how the game was going to be designed. Now obviously, colour also plays an important part with how horror is portrayed and used in media. But I have a feeling that as long as I play with colours cleverly, I'll be able to strike a really sweet spot in the middle.

One example is my use of the colour of white. In Niravasi, a lot of the game uses vibrant colours for its environments such as greens and blue, but White is only used for a few things. One being computer terminal screens that the player can interact with; the other being the enemies that Mura needs to hide from. Well I guess Mura's little face has the colour white, but that's more of a character design homage to another character of a similar make-up.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for this week. Again, I'm sorry for the lack of meaningful discussion or updates with these latest devlogs; time's more busy spent working on the game at this point. I'll think over the week about what I'll be discussing next, but I'm hoping that I can get the remaining portions of the second level done, so that I'll be able to move onto the next stage and maybe even get a playable public demo release out for all of you.

As always, have a lovely week and I'll talk to you all again soon.

Kind regards,
King Sangos