Laying out the Lore

Hey everyone, Sam here to tell you a little bit about the lore of our game. One of the problems that emerged while working on this type of game was the need for some sort of basic lore in the game, as there were elements in our game that seemed out of place and did not mesh well. Those elements were primarily the platforms in the game. While players loved the general background art in the game, they were not fans of the platforms, which felt out of place with the environment (since they were pretty basic rectangles that feel inconsistent). Thus, we needed to detail the lore for the game way more to help us connect elements that did not match. After a lot of discussion, here is an excerpt of the lore we created:

“In our game, constellations are worshipped because of their ability to grant wishes. Constellations and stars are created by Artemis, goddess of nature, to handle fulfilling dreams for the people of Greece. During this time, Orion, a famed hunter with legendary exploits, wanted even the Gods to recognize his fame and started hunting down every creature in Greece. To protect the animals and teach Orion a lesson, Artemis turned the mortal man Orion into a constellation, with the intent that he fulfill the dreams of the people he hurt . However, Orion, furious that he was changed, unleashed his fury on the animals constellations of the world and severly weakened many of them, leaving them a shell of their former selves. The only animal constellation to survive was the trickster fox, Vulpecula, but she was very hurt and needed to rest in Artemis’ observatory, which serves as the place of worship for the constellations .

Orion grew more and more support from the people of Greece not only for his exploits, but also because the lack of animal constellations meant that dreams were no longer being fulfilled. Therefore, shrines and previous places of worship were largely abandoned by the people of Greece. While the other gods are content with Orion’s actions, as has promised that he will have his followers praise them in his places of worship, Artemis is displeased with Orion’s actions and asks her father, Zeus, to stop this madness. Zeus says that he will intervene only after the animal constellations have proven themselves capable of handling themselves. With Vulpecula being the only remaining animal constellation, Artemis tasks her with reviving the other constellations with her celestial powers and stopping Orion’s lust for power. This is the overall arching story of the game, but for the sake of clarity and a shorter time frame, the player simply wakes up and goes to save one constellation, Corvus.”

That all sound nice and dandy, right? Well, while we did have a better understanding of the world we were building, this is far too much exposition for a brief, 10 minute video. Therefore, we decided to simplify this further and just explain that Orion was a bad constellation and threw the other animal constellations to the Earth, hurting the animal constellations. The stars left an impact in the forest they landed in, causing objects to float in the area effected and are now able to be manipulated by one with the power of constellations (aka the player). This simpler lore still explains the players goals, but ties the mechanics better into the lore and allows us to explain the story in a short amount of time.