Behind The Park - Part 2
Welcome back to our Behind the Park series, where we dive into the making of Orco Park. Sorry for the delay but I might have experienced a teeny-tiny burnout.
In the previous part, we looked at how Orco Park was designed and developed, we’ll now focus on its art, sounds and music.
Drawing the Park
Initially, the park wasn’t supposed to be in pixel art.
I was afraid mixing hand drawing and pixel art in the same game would look too weird, and was planning to hire another comic artist for the park. But Exaheva convinced me it would actually be easier to have two radically different art styles to coexist than two similar ones. Since she usually knows what she’s talking about, I followed her advice and wrote to Nico.
I met Nico years ago at various festivals and game jams. Nico is a pixel artist who, among other things, did most of the art for There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension, an interface heavy game. She seemed like the perfect fit.
I gave her a few references : Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s Surrounded Islands:
Paolo Pettigiani’s infrared pictures of the Maldives:
This pixel art found on Twitter years ago whose original artist I can’t find anymore (any help welcome!):
And I let her cook!
Even though the whole park is in pixel art, you might be surprised to learn that several of the rides were actually first drawn in voxels (3D pixels). This helped her save time and design livelier animations.
Orco
While quite central in the game, Orco actually took time to be clearly defined. Having some kind of advisor in the park has always been on the agenda, but who that advisor would be and what he would look like was still blurry during pre-production.
I asked Nico to doodle potential advisors without any more instructions and here’s what she came up with:
While all of them could have made perfect advisors for a theme park management game, they all lacked personality, which was no surprise since I had not given them any.
We needed a friendlier advisor. Or weirder. Or both. An animal mascot maybe? Probably a sea animal since the park is an island. A gull? A shark ? An octopus maybe?
The idea of an orca quickly took root:
Orcas are every kid’s favorite sea animal, fitting the idea of an amusement park
But they also are the deadliest sea predators, fitting Wednesdays’ darker themes
Their black and white coat already looks like a tuxedo, fitting for an advisor role
I suggested the idea to Nico and she came up with much cooler advisors:
I frankensteined them in MS Paint
And Nico gave Orco the final spark of life.
When writing Orco’s dialogues, I really embraced the Friend/Predator ambiguity at first, which I found very fitting of Wednesdays’ themes. At that point, the bottled messages in the park even sometimes contained warnings about Orco.
But during playtests, I noticed that while players seemed to enjoy the park, they were very wary of Orco - too wary - and that it kinda ruined the idea of the park as a fun decompression chamber.
So I changed tack and decided the park would become a safe place. The messages in the bottles would be tips, and Orco would be a friend. An awkward, clumsy, capitalist friend, but a friend anyway.
Sounding the park
But what would be Orco without his baritone voice? For that, we relied on Virginia.
Virginia doesn’t have a baritone voice but they know their way around sound design, and that’s how THIS got turned into THIS.
A similar process was used for the visitors' voices, while most of the parks’ sounds were done using foley (see Behind The Scenes Part 3).
But the most distinctive aspect of the park’s sound design certainly is its music.
As I recall, Virginia nailed it on their very first try, mixing influences such as Animal Crossing, Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game and Hawaiian music to get this cute/summer mood.
While making/testing the game I probably heard this music hundreds of times, but weirdly, I’m still not sick of it! That’s how good it is!
You know what? Let’s hear it one more time!
Aaand that’s it. That’s how Orco Park was made.
If you haven’t played Wednesdays yet, I’m sure you’re now feeling the urge to get it on Steam or Itchio. And If you have, you probably just got reminded how good it was and want to tell all your friends about it.
I understand. I won’t try to stop you.
Stay cool, don’t forget to hydrate and see you next time