Hey all! This is Lead Writer Prie coming in hot with some gentle news and a bit of lore. First up. Some updates! It's not all sunshine and rainbows. Life gets in the way and it's been difficult keeping up morale when your expectations don’t quite reach reality. Not to mention balancing part time work with passion and curiosity met with failure. Despite all that though, the team is trucking on through. We actually decided to take a little break and do some restructuring to figure out how to ensure we’re not burning out, as well as enlisting the help of those close to us to ensure that the next grant we are aiming to apply for goes smoothly!

It’s times like this where everything feels a little messy and unstructured that I can’t help but think about where we’ve come from, and how this project came to be.

Meet The Team!

Picture this; the weight of one of the last semesters of school is upon the backs of three tired university students. We knew that the final semester project was upon us, and with it, graduation in sight. We were kind of an ad hoc team from there. Ben called Will and later Celest, we looked up our discord school board for TJ (who came with Gyles in a twofer deal)- but it somehow worked. Our team feels like lightning in a bottle; and by the end of our school year we decided that we didn’t want to wait for it to strike twice.

The Inspirations

Despite Ecliptic being a small game, I’d consider it to have grand ambitions. Obviously for one, the writing and storyline is heavily inspired by this one little author’s love of Greek Mythology and the fan that flamed the fire, Percy Jackson. We have spent many a night of just me rattling off to our coffee driven artists and programmers about how the little things can be incorporated into the design of the game.

Here are what some of our members have to say about what drives us!

Tears of the Kingdom!! The art style and vfx is so pretty, I'll forever recreate it! It was my first zelda game and I'm glad I picked it. I also listen to minecraft ost while I'm working which sparks creative juices. I'm also inspired by the team, nothing brings me more joy and sparkle than concept art, experiments and bouncing ideas off each other. -TJ, Tech Artist

What inspires me with ecliptic is a lot of ethereal photography, games such as breath of the wild and undertale! Aiming for a sort of whimsical, fantasy setting in the environments/character designs felt fitting for the location they’re in: outer space on an ecliptic plane, living in a world far, but familiar, from our own.

As for music taste to get the juices flowing, j-rock, j-pop, pop and rnb 💪 -CJ, Producer

What inspires me with ecliptic is mainly Hades, with the art style and also my love for horoscopes. I’m a girl who adores listening to things relating to astrology.  I’m also a huge riot games girlie so a lot of my inspiration and even music i listen to are related to their games.- Celest, Animator/Social Media

But most importantly; it's us! Maybe it’s sappy, and maybe we’re young, but the real inspiration behind Ecliptic, if you ask me, is the team. We may have started out as a group of students vying for an A, but we’ve truly learnt how to work together and enjoy the collaboration that goes into every facet of the games development.

Here’s really early concept art trying to figure out Aries’ room; behold, the sheep shield.

Cheers everyone; the Ecliptical Cycle goes on, and so do we!

-Prie

P.S Wishlist Ecliptic on steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3025870?utm_source=source