Hey everyone,

We're back once again for another weekly Devlog for NIRAVASI. Unfortunately, like last week's one, this week's Devlog will be along the shorter side. But thankfully, I do have a few new little things to show to all of you here, as well as a new topic for discussion. Before we do that though, I'm happy to announce that work on Ishani Bazaar is still going along smoothly (slowly, but surely). I've almost completed the first zone that you can explore and have begun designing the rough layout for the rest of them. My hope is that with the design of Ishani Bazaar, it'll offer players a plethora of locations to explore, while still allowing a clear focus on where they must go in order to complete the level. But enough about stuff that's not ready to show off yet, let's talk about stuff that is!

One Winged Seraph

As I explained in the Devlog talking about Mura's new look, ALL of the currently existing characters will have their Facial/Overworld Sprites redone. The next character to start off with was obviously going to be Rebecca, the Seraph Girl that's often seen to be the most rational of our little kitty's crewmates. While I'm still tweaking her Overworld sprites, my good friend (ZeeMadMaverick) has finished working on the new facial sprites for our lovely little wing-girl, which you can find here!

With a much more slender and approachable look to her design, I'm hoping that players will immediately take a liking to her personality more (so that what happens to her next feels all the more tragic). Speaking of tragedy, let's talk about the inspirations for the generally dark, yet wonderful atmosphere of the game.

Beauty in Purity

NIRAVASI is a very difficult game to pinpoint when talking about it from a thematical standpoint. You have a colourful use of characters like Mura, an anthropomorphic cat person, that evokes a sense of playfulness and even childlike naivety in the game's presentation. But then you have AEON and its robotic proxies, which completely contrast that mindset and lean on the lines of the uncanny (human skeletons with TV monitors strapped to their faces will do that to you). Finally, we have the city of Niravasi itself. Whereas the history and look of the city's surroundings and palace give off the impression that it'll be your typical ancient city with old buildings and horrifying curses, Niravasi's inner domain itself is highly-advanced and is more akin to that of a science-fiction film.

All of these elements naturally clash with each other and that is intentional; you are made to feel alien in an alien world. Naturally, a wide variety of themes like this has to have been inspired from somewhere, right? Well, yes, they do in fact come from a variety of sources. Let's roughly cover a few of the aspects that I've noticed people seemingly being interested in.

Mura: Initially, the idea of the protagonist being an anthropomorphic cat wasn't initially planned. However, I was greatly inspired by the works of Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido for their involvement in Blacksad, an amazing noir comic series featuring a gumshoe private detective solving brutal mysteries in a down-to-earth world filled with talking animals. Also, Mura's design was inspired by a cat called Pooka, who was my late fiancee's cat before it sadly passed away a few years ago. I adored that fluffball and wanted to immortalise his loveable look somehow and combined with my love of video games, using him as a reference for our feline protagonist only made sense.

AEON and CALI: This is a difficult reference to explain, as talking about him in further detail may spoil a big surprise I've got waiting for the players at the end of the game. However, for a bit of clarification, AEON's design is in reference to two particular entities from other pieces of media. The first was a scrapped antagonist design for a Halo Machinima series I was producing called Winds of Serenity, which possessed a very simplistic but intimidating face. The second would be the Guardian enemies from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. With an elegant, yet scary design, it only made sense for me to use the mechanics involving the Guardians as a key component in NIRAVASI.

The City of Niravasi: This is a mish-mash of sources, but the most predominant one being the city of New Mombasa in Halo 3: ODST. Sporting a futuristic, but still grounded look to the city, the feeling of wandering alone in a once bustling city was absolutely something I wanted to capture for the game. Additionally, the use of lighting and rain was also a big thing I wanted to use for the game and I'm glad that the RPG Maker MV3D Plugin allows me to accomplish this seamlessly.

There's definitely more references + inspirations I've used for the game as a whole, but I'll save conversations for those another day. I hope at least it will have a painted a bit of a clearer picture in your head on just how much goes into creating the narrative and design of a game like NIRAVASI. Here's hoping that whatever's in store in the future will amaze you like it's amazed me!

That's all for this week's Devlog. I know it wasn't very substantial in content, but I can promise you that work on Ishani Bazaar is still going along very well and I'll continue to include updates on all of my social media pages like I've been doing so far already. With that out of the way, I hope you all have a pleasant evening and I'll talk to you all again soon!

Kind regards,
Angus (Sangos)