Hello again everyone!

So for the past week or so, we’ve been preparing a new version of our internal beta for the game. Whenever a new one is on the way, as soon as most of the bugs are gone, we suddenly spot all kinds of things that ought to be better. So this week we suddenly found ourselves rewriting a lot of cutscenes in the last minute in an effort to give things that extra bit of polish.

One of those is a pretty important scene in the game. Originally, the character sprites were discussing an important character, and the dialogue just wasn’t bringing across the character’s significance. So we thought we’d add some visuals. Here’s what Simon initially pitched:

Most of Owlboy’s story is told through what is happening directly within the game, so these scenes were a bit of a change from the norm. With images this large, it allowed for more freedom in the use of lighting and detail.

Usually the most crucial step in these kinds of images is the palette. Especially when working with pixel art, most colors are recycled and will greatly affect the outcome by the end. Because of the flames shown in the back, a bighter backdrop was initially chosen, but it ended up fading out the scenery behind the main character. Additionally, you want to reuse colors from other areas to make your image feel whole. In this case, the colors of the fire and gold buckles mirrored the ones in the banners and fire, but the dark sky helped incorporate some of the darkness left by the clothing.

The finished result!

The image will be sepparated into parallax layers and be given subtle movement and particle effects by the time it is complete.

Much of the work we’ve been doing recently has been on characterization and story. The danger with having a game with dialogue is that it can feel very static, and so we’ve been trying to polish up the cutscenes so that they feel like they’re more alive with events always taking place. Hopefully by our next update we can take a better look at the world itself.

And with that, its time to review the results of our internal beta! Wish us luck!