Story and Art Style of a Blockchain-Based Game

Introduction

I'm Brandon Graham, I've been drawing and writing for as long as I can remember. I've mostly been making comic books, my portfolio includes King City – a story about a thief who uses a cat as a weapon, Multiple Warheads – a Russian fantasy about a smuggler of magic organs and her werewolf boyfriend, and Rain Like Hammers – a science fiction body-swapping/walking-city adventure. I also headed up a relaunch of the superhero comic Prophet, as a far-future science fiction story. I also worked on an Adventure Time episode – Jermaine.

The Moonray team has reached out to me because of my work on Prophet. We also brought in my long-time friend, fellow Prophet collaborator and of my favorite artists Farel Dalrymple. 

I was interested in how unique Moonray felt from any game I'd seen before and was excited to explore very alien worlds and the idea of sentient beings made out of living building material. 

The Game’s Story

Moonray takes place in a completely alien world, long after humanity has died out. An alien cult has captured an ancient goddess in order to steal her ability to create life using a material called Miium. The Miium lifeforms, the goddess has created, have gone on to create their own cultures and religions. One being even splitting in two. With one half becoming a living city and the other forming a religion where each member carries a piece of its body with them.

A big theme in this game is the idea of personal freedom and finding what way best suits your character in a world full of different factions and gods.

As for my sources of inspiration, I've been looking at a lot of work of fantastic glaucous painters like Wayne Douglas Barlowe and Zdzislaw Beksinski, we wanted the game to feel like the strangest science fiction book covers. I'm also a big fan of the early DOOM games, so I've been going back and forth, thinking about why they worked so well.

Art Style

When I joined the team, the look of the game had already been established, with a nice mix of recognizable nature, trees, and grassy fields mixed with more alien and abstract shapes. I wanted the game to feel like there's a memory of humanity left in the universe but that's becoming its own thing.

I feel exceptionally lucky that the people working on this game are all extremely capable and were already making unique work before they were brought on. We want this game to look new and strange. The main thing I look out for is that things don't look derivative of other fiction. We don't want it to look or feel like anything else.

I've been really into the idea of mixing natural environments with alien shapes and a lot of that is stark white marble in the middle of mountains and grass. Or taking something we're more used to seeing and tweaking it slightly, we've got an entirely red forest with a stark white tree at the center of it. We've been describing a tribe of creatures using color tone to show how warlike or peaceful they are. 

Conclusion

I think for something like this to work it has to be about the look and feel of the game first and then the world and backstory. The world has to be interesting enough for players to want to continue to spend time in it.

The story has been informing some interesting visuals. We have characters that don't require food, water, and sleep in the way that we're used to – so it's been fun to think about what a city built for them would look like – and how these new creatures are affecting the natural world they're being brought into.

Brandon Graham, Lead Writer of Moonray

Interview conducted by Arti Sergeev