The 100% canon arm ref has never left my mind and I thank y'all for the delicious food.

Thanks so much for reading our little thread on art style and inspiration! We’re going to be sharing more behind the scenes as we get through development! Stay tuned!!

And finally, we’re irish, so we couldn’t help ourselves but put some ancient history in there as well. The local pub is built around standing stones, and market cobblestones depict old mythology that can’t quite be stamped out…

To represent a place that’s going through change, we also looked at older eras - art nouveau in particular for UI and architecture. The ornateness of it contrasts so well with industrial brutalism.

John Lines is a current day artist who inspired a sense of authenticity, to help our city feel real and grounded.

We loved Edward Hopper’s paintings for the vibe and tone - the contrast between cold streets and warm interiors, the strange isolating voyeuristic feeling characteristic of viewing city life through windows…

The Hearth and Harbour is set in a city however, and as a new restaurant-owner, you’re not struggling against the forces of nature, but capitalism instead. So we started our research with advertisements !

Leyendecker’s warmth in character depiction was massively influential

Because Pale was set in on a 1910’s Antarctic expedition, our influences were Victorian etchings, and paintings of polar scenes (fun fact: this Edwin Landseer painting is reported to be haunted)

Bonus <3

If you’re into behind-the-scenes game development, you can subscribe to the mailing list on our website! We’re posting dev logs on the first Monday of every month ✨

This month, we discuss post-release soup, how we invented a world for The Pale Beyond and then ignored it, and The Irish-British version of The Bear ☘️