After the appearance of an unknown parasite in the Coral biome, it’s up to you to save these creatures, using your panoply of tools and your ingenuity.
And who knows, perhaps along the way you’ll discover the truth about your father, who disappeared while sailing the stellar ocean in search of the mythical solar eel…
It took Ophéline Weber (Project Lead – Concept Art – Sculpt – Texturing), Rémy Almar (Programming), Thomas Ramond (Programming – VFX – Lighting – Tech artist), Etann Jean-Baptiste (Sculpt – Animation), Mathieu Bourreau (Concept Art – Modelling – Sculpt – SFX), Malvy Delaban (Modelling – UI – UX), Ryan Dias Suter (Programming – Communication – Sound Design) nine months to produce, Laura Hoyos Guevara (Sculpting – Texturing – Concept Art – Modelling), Corentin Talieu (Game Design – Narrative Design – Lighting) and Romane Gibili (Game Design – Narrative Design – Level Design) to produce this major project, a game combining adventure and exploration as part of the final year of ESMA’s video games and game design course.
It’s a long-term job, but also a real experience of teamwork, an essential asset for entering the video game market, whatever the sector. To find out more about the production of Void Fisher, take a behind-the-scenes look at the project with the team.
A relaxing and invigorating experience
Aimed at fans of space exploration as well as lovers of nature and fantasy worlds, Void Fisher is a relaxing and gentle experience, with simple, fluid gameplay set in a rich, colourful world.
“What we wanted to build was a dynamic exploration game, allowing players to evolve in colourful and surprising biomes”, says the team. The key is to master the spaceship, improve it and complete a simple but touching origin story arc combining mythology and family history.
The team envisaged this gentle, cosy-game approach in terms of both gameplay and design. “We thought of Void Fisher’s graphics in dreamlike, soothing terms, their main aim being to immerse players in an imaginary world. To create this atmosphere, Void Fisher draws heavily on children’s illustration books. To underline the fairytale atmosphere of our space, we use similar codes and patterns, as well as soft, pastel colours that invite players to immerse themselves in our environment and relax.”
It’s a world that’s far from mawkish, thanks to the inventiveness of the concept artists and modellers, who have created a wide range of creatures, each more surprising than the last, directly inspired by nature.
“We also drew inspiration from games like Mario Galaxy to make the space less cold, more alive and more joyful,” adds the team.
Drawing the Void Fisher, a spaceship and character in its own right
Even though the protagonist of the story is none other than Solan, in search of his father’s origins and a fan of space exploration, it is through the Void Fisher that we discover the game’s universe.
To build this ship, the team looked at the story of the person (or person) who created it. “For us, Solan is an intelligent character, curious and a handyman, capable of transforming, repairing and improving more or less anything.
From then on, his boat had to reflect these capabilities, as well as the way we imagined this protagonist.”
A patched-up but lively ship, all orange and yellow in the image of Solan’s concept art, and the soft palette used for the rest of the universe. “Even though the colours contrast with the blue of the space surrounding the ship, we wanted the Void Fisher to be completely in tune with its surroundings.
That’s why the hull of the ship looks like fish scales, and why it’s quite round and soft, quite organic.” As an added nod to their character, if you take a closer look, you’ll also notice that the ship’s cabin is designed like a diver’s bubble… just like Solan’s helmet!
A universe rich in unique creatures, characters and places
Void Fisher‘s strength lies in its ability to draw on the wealth of marine life to recreate a highly coherent spatial universe, populated by unique characters and animals. “We drew our inspiration from real fish, which we then transformed to make them more alien, while at the same time defining common traits.
Each of our fish has double fins and two pairs of eyes, which reinforces the fact that they belong to a common biome. A space biome that the team wanted to make, like their project, warm and colourful to reinforce the happy, dreamlike atmosphere of Void Fisher: “At first, we thought we’d make this space dark, with cold colours to contrast with the bright, colourful environment. However, this didn’t reflect the mood we wanted to convey.
That’s why we decided to paint the world in blue and purple to make it more like an illustration, while including varied and colourful backgrounds within it.”
Once again, nature has influenced the design of these zones, from the anemone planet to the spiral shell inside which an entire world unfolds, not to mention the zones inspired by sponges, algae and underwater plants.
It’s a very coherent creation, with a highly polished design that reflects all the energy invested by the team in this solid project.
Follow the flow
To guide the player through their universe, the team has set up a kind of road, the flow. Allowing the ship to navigate more quickly between the spaceport (the Blue Space team’s base) and the different levels, the flow also helps to guide the player through this vast and rich environment, where the possibilities for exploration are vast and can make the player’s head spin. The subtext of the game design is twofold: the macro objective of saving the various creatures using your increasingly powerful ship, and two sub-objectives: destroying the parasites using your drain cleaner, and capturing the sick creatures to cure them.
The mechanics are simple but effective, and the game is as smooth as it is satisfying.
What remains after completing Void Fisher is a real sense of fulfilment, and the experience of a quality game with a rich, soothing environment. A fine achievement, for which the team would also like to thank Evelina Glineviciute (Sound Design, composition) and Lucas Dupuy (animation).
Discover and play Void Fisher, available for free here: