The events in the game I’m making are happening in the countryside next to a lake in Finland. I spent my childhood in a similar setting so I have a strong relationship to this kind of scenery. Even now, living in a city in another country, I still regularly go back home to spend time in the Finnish nature.

Summer in Finland is a truly magical time of the year: the sun stays up late and at night it barely drops below the horizon. These are the famous white nights when it doesn’t get totally dark and the landscape is painted with beautiful pink, blue, purple, yellow and orange hues.

For my game I want to create the atmosphere and environment from these magical summer days and nights. To achieve this I’m using my own memories and photos, as well as the Finnish nature website luontoportti.com to get information about Finnish lakeside vegetation.

My aim is for the game environment to look believable and not 100% accurate. The game graphics are going to be reasonably low poly which means I don’t have to consider the finest level of detail in the objects and textures.

My main reference points for the style is the game “Virginia”. Virginia has a beautiful low poly environment, it is built using almost flat shaders, realistic colors and low-level texture details. Light and color usage is excellent, sometimes dramatic, to enhance the ambiance. As a result the game looks amazing with well-executed style choices.

With these things in mind, I’ve started to create the terrain and I will be posting updates about it later.