I had the pleasure of working with my team at Captilight on this wonderful game! We took many inspirations and references while working on Path of Kami. Among them were Zelda, Abzu, Journey, Okami, and more. As the Creative Director on the project, I worked closely with the Art Director to finalize the art style for the game. Below is a showcase of a portion of the discovery phase we did to finalize the look of the game.
We did several mood boards for color palettes, references, inspirations, and more. I can't wait to share them!
But first...gameplay inspirations
Gameplay-wise we took a lot of inspiration from various Zelda games, Journey and Abzu. We knew we wanted the game to be a casual and relaxing experience but still being engaging hence the simple puzzles :)
We also wanted to do lots of environmental storytelling like Journey/Abzu, our wisp friend will share a lot of lore with us in-game but you’ll notice through collectibles and art in the environment will also be sharing tidbits of lore with you as well!
Artstyle Behind Path of Kami
Path of Kami utilizes a 3D stylized watercolor-esque art style that has two different aesthetics, one for the human world and the other for the spirit world. The human world contains hues of white, yellow, green, reds, and browns while the spirit world has hues of blues, purples, and neon-like elements.
Mortal World Moodboard
In the human world, we seek to emphasize the main characteristics of each season, warm saturated colors during spring/summer displayed in nature populated levels and desaturated white/grey cool tones in more desolate environments for winter.
Spirit World Moodboard
The spirit world seeks to express a dream-like ethereal full of nature environments through cool saturated tones as well as displaying a richer amount of air particles and small emissive fairy-like elements.
Watercolor/Painterly Look
We wanted the game to have a watercolor/painterly look and we took several references from games like Okami, GRIS, and Child of Light. We didn’t want anything too inky like Okami and GRIS is able to pull off the watercolor look really well because it's a 2D game. We decided to go with a mix of GRIS and Child of Light but in 3D.
Hope this gives you an insight into some of the inspirations behind the game!
[Originally posted on Captilight.com]