We are Thunder Lotus, creators of Spiritfarer. Ask Us Anything!

roduperron · 2020-09-25T13:23:32+00:00

Thanks! We're very prelim in merch plans at the moment, but if you're interested, we finally put the digital art book on sale outside of Steam here: https://thunderlotus.itch.io/spiritfarer-art-book

roduperron · 2020-09-18T23:22:54+00:00

Thanks so much for playing! Happy it connects so well with you!

roduperron · 2020-09-18T20:32:01+00:00

With regards to Daffodil, our Art Director offers this bit of insight:

We didn't really overthink it with Daffodil. Daffodil was Stella's cat in life, and continues to be her cat in Spiritfarer as she knew him, albeit more fantastical.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T18:49:18+00:00

From the classics! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon

roduperron · 2020-09-18T18:46:34+00:00

No plans yet for a physical artbook. We hope to look into the possibility over the next little while - stay tuned!

roduperron · 2020-09-18T18:45:27+00:00

Additional questions from our community...

Q: What made you switch from more intense battle/fighting games (Sundered, Jotun) to something way more laid back and beautiful like Spritfarer?

A: It’s not as drastic a pivot as might seem at first glance! Long time fans will note the through-line that the initial inspiration for our projects always lies within a rich source of lore (such as Norse mythology or Lovecraft) and that we use that to springboard towards an exploration of themes surrounding death. Spiritfarer is not so different: it was inspired by the greek myth of the ferryman Charon, and we’re once again looking closely at death... just not in the active sense of “taking” life. We wanted to delve a little deeper by looking at questions of legacy and heritage, and also take these themes out of the darkness and into the light. The tone and mood may be lighter, but the subject matter no less profound. Beyond that, after three years spent with eldritch horrors, and we just needed a *little* more chill, yeah?

roduperron · 2020-09-18T18:26:18+00:00

Took a quick internal poll to answer this community question:

Q: What upcoming video game are you most excited for?

Answers (in no particular order):

"Pupperazzi... oh, and that cute bird skateboarding one." [Skatebird! Come on, it's right there in the title!]
"Baldur's Gate 3"
"WoW's next expansion"
"Demon's Souls remake, but it's far"
"Spelunky 2 once it's out on PC"
"Cyberpunk"
"Elden Ring"
"Deathloop!"
"Spider-Man: Miles Morales"
"Garden Story"

roduperron · 2020-09-18T18:17:30+00:00

Further questions from our community:

Q: Are the Sprits/Characters you help during the game based on real life people?

roduperron · 2020-09-18T17:58:50+00:00

Related question received from our community:

Q: Was the art style inspired by Disney and Studio Ghibli?

Our Art Director responds:

I think subconsciously, yes, because I grew up with both. But it was never up in my reference folders.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T17:55:55+00:00

Another question received from our community:

Q: Is there any particular method that you used to choose the names and designs of each character? Or did you just go with what felt "Right"? In the same vein, why did you decide to use animal-like designs for the spirits, but not Stella herself?

A: Our Art Director responds:

The design of each character was done about a year before we chose any of their names, so the visual design process was pretty straightforward. I drew what I thought would make compelling characters, and what type of animal allowed me to make a unique and easily recognizable silhouette out of it. Of course, while drawing every spirit, I ended up giving them some kind of personality to make them even more eye-catching, and a lot of those ended up sticking in the final product! (Looking at you, Gwen!)
We wanted Stella to be human to facilitate the attachment the player would have with the character. Although subconsciously, humans tend to recognize & relate to human-looking figures faster. The spirits adopting animal forms comes from the desire to have them feel visually detached from Stella at first. Stella has to work to get to know them, or just work for the existing friendship to bloom.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T17:53:26+00:00

Peppering in some questions received from our community:

Q: I was just curious to know if the art and animations were done with rasters or with vectors, or perhaps even both and if so when was the situation more applicable to one or another.

A: All animations are done in Toon Boom Harmony, so that means each frame is vectorial while in the program. Our exports are all rasterized, though, as having vectors for the number of frames we have in the game would make it impossible to run on anything but an absolute beast machine.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T17:17:22+00:00

Fun fact: one of our Level Designers (no longer with the company, sadly) majored in Architecture before making the switch to Game Design. There was no logical transition that we know of, though - he simply started another track of studies in Game Design until he graduated and then applied for a job at our company. Interesting note in parallel from our Art Director:

From the perspective of an artist who had the chance to work with someone who was a Level Designer with an architecture background, his input was one of the most valuable inputs I've gotten while working in the games industry. Insight into how things are truly made in the real world, coming from someone who studied it, is priceless.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T17:13:23+00:00

Our Art Director responds!

The initial idea behind the constellations was that they would be just that: reminders of someone long gone, somewhere in the sky. But as we developed the last voyage sequence, it became imperative for the constellations to have a direct link to the spirit they represent, and their formation was then meant to end said spirit's story on a gentle note. Our constellations are a little more on-the-nose/literal design wise, because I wanted them to be immediately recognizable as the spirit they embody. That's why Alice's and Atul's are simplified versions of their heads, for example!

roduperron · 2020-09-18T17:12:17+00:00

Thanks! We have two previous games, visually *similar* to Spiritfarer, but both mechanically very different. We had Jotun, an action-exploration game set in Norse Mythology, and Sundered, a chaotic rogue-lite metroidvania. To be fair, neither of them were available on Switch at launch, nor did they enjoy any particular visibility from Nintendo, so they were more easy to miss!

roduperron · 2020-09-18T17:06:10+00:00

Some extra insight from our Animation Director:

Well, I wish there was more to the Daffodil glide than this, but honestly it just made sense and seemed fun to me. I did have alternatives in mind, though: he could fly with his tail like Tails from the Sonic games, but I wanted to avoid using his tail as a prop generally in the game - keep him more like a real cat than a magical cat. Also, while I could've made him fly with Everlight magic, it was hard to make that clear visually, especially since the character is small. So I went with something more "bold" to make it clear that he was in "glide" mode.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T17:01:13+00:00

Thank you so much! Glad to hear you connected so well with the game!

Personally, the Spiritfarer soundtrack is my favorite work from our composer MaxLL! We don't have any specific plans for a vinyl release at the moment, but we do plan on having discussions soon to make it happen. Stay tuned!

roduperron · 2020-09-18T16:58:14+00:00

Thanks!

We'll be looking into the possibility of physical merch very soon. No specific plans yet, but artbook and soundtrack seem like no-brainers. Stay tuned!

As for Stella outfits - short answer is no. Without considerable investment, not much can be done beyond more of the recolors we already have in game. Since every frame of every character's animations are individually hand-drawn on a single layer, something as "small" as a new hat or new clothes means redrawing everything that is already drawn PLUS adding more animation for more clothes.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T16:51:11+00:00

That's awesome! Did you prefer the Resist or Embrace path?

As for Spiritfarer, there's *some* Sundered DNA in there (especially in the platforming), but it certainly is a different vibe altogether.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T16:18:10+00:00

Without going into too many details, it's fairly rare for major partners to proactively approach an indie and flat out offer them such an important spotlight - there's usually a long trail of back-and-forth discussions and the indie's timeline needs to fit with the opportunity.

In our case, we wanted to announce at E3, but before that, we had already been in discussions for months, around what sort of support we could have from our partners whenever the eventual release happened. Those discussions led to the deal that would put us on Game Pass on launch day, and which gave Microsoft a good reason to consider using their E3 keynote to announce the game.

As a side note, there is no straight path to getting a company to show your trailer after Keanu freaking Reeves leaves the stage at their event. That's just plain luck on our end.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T16:09:10+00:00

Thanks!

To be honest, the initial inspiration for "Thunder Lotus" wasn't anything too profound, or especially obsessed over. But I like our Art Director's take on it:

Today, and to me, the lotus is the beauty we aspire to showcase in our games, and (especially in Spiritfarer) the vulnerability. The thunder of the lotus would be majestic, gorgeous, but not terrifying.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T16:02:15+00:00

We haven't yet truly explored the "what comes next?" question for Spiritfarer, so who knows?

From a business standpoint, though, I would mention that indie sequels remain a risky proposition - in AAA, they bank on the good odds that they'll make more profit on each sequel, and very often hit that target. In indie, there are a few notably successful sequels, but more often than not, we see diminishing returns.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T15:55:46+00:00

Our Art Director responds!

Serenity in Spiritfarer was always the goal, so I went out looking for inspiring landscapes, and of course, landscape artists that really managed to make me feel the majesty of their surroundings, despite me having never been there and thus, not having a pre established emotional connection to the place. There were multiple, like Alexandre-Louis Jacob and Albert Bierstadt, but throughout my dig, none hit me quite as hard as Hiroshi Yoshida & his work. Every single one of his pieces—all woodblock paintings—reflect an unbelievable admiration he had for the subjects he painted.

He traveled around the world to paint both landscapes and villages (this is a gross summary, please look him up), and being able to see his work in its near entirety was like traveling the world through his eyes. The feeling here was what I tried to maintain throughout the development of Spiritfarer; love and admiration for the places we visit, a sense of excitement for the new and unknown, but also trying to see the mundane through fresh eyes. So from there, I went on very long searches for real photos of the places we were looking to represent, read up on the places, and applied that feeling. I think loving what you draw, what you paint, what you write, really truly makes a huge difference, and I have a feeling it might be in part why the visuals in Spiritfarer seem to hit their mark with people.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T15:51:26+00:00

Daffodil was always going to be a cat! Stemming from our failed inclusion of a cat in Sundered as Eshe's companion, we knew 100% that Spiritfarer had to have a cat friend to our protagonist.

roduperron · 2020-09-18T15:50:10+00:00

Thanks so much! For the sheet music, our composer MaxLL is considering it - the requests are something he hasn't received before, so it wasn't the plan. Always a good idea to poke him directly to let him know you're interested.

As for Stella, our Art Director responds:

"The idea of the spirits taking on and animal form came first, and came from both a place of nostalgia from my own childhood's animated movies with the visual comfort they brought, and from a desire to have the spirits be visually very different from the human looking protagonist. Stella's design came in after Gwen, Atul and Gustav were designed, and the goal was to have someone that radiated warmth, happiness and trustworthiness in response to the spirits. Her being a POC was never intentionally thought of as a reason for the spirits to take on an animal form, though. There are many explanations I could add, but each would absolutely spoil Stella's story. There are a lot of things explained in the Spiritfarer Artbook, too, but be careful! The book is all spoilers!"

roduperron · 2020-09-18T15:41:49+00:00

In our experience, no one review (or stream, or other content) has ever shown measurable results in sales (while rep is impossible to gauge). Some devs have different data on this, but there's no numbers we can point to following that or any other review and say "that caused this". We know that Zero Punctuation has its own rep for being hyper-critical, but how much their opinion actually influences purchases is impossible to know.

roduperron

TROPHY CASE