Ahoy, everyone!

As the heatwaves of summer start to settle down and the cooling weather makes swimming with our friends in the sea more difficult, we thought it was time to make another post here! Our previous dev log, which I also wrote, gave insight to how Seahorse Saga began and came to be. So if you’re curious about all of that, make sure to check out our previous dev log.

This time around, I’d like to reflect on a recent trip our team took to an aquarium! Our team leads thought that something fun was in order. Some sort of summer event to raise team motivation, while also teaching us something new. So, we organized a trip to an aquarium over Labor Day Weekend, where many of our team members met up together for a day filled with fish! We were excited to go, given that it was the first time many of us had gone to one in several years.

Between a wonderful look at some seals, an immersive room filled with a huge variety of jellyfish, and a place to pet stingrays that we just kept returning to, there was a lot to take in for the day. We came prepared with notebooks, jotting down any ideas that came to mind. Creatures we never heard of that we wanted to represent somewhere, obstacles to incorporate in our level design, specific motions for different species to keep in mind for our art and animations…It wasn’t just a fun day at the aquarium: it was also a pretty productive one.

For example, we saw a ton of Nettle Jellies, most specifically Bay Nettle Jellies. These jellyfish have very very long tentacles, as you can see from the picture; it was mesmerizing to watch them gently float around, tentacles slowly flowing behind them. While watching them I was getting lost in thought. “How could we incorporate these into Seahorse Saga? Could they float around in the background, or maybe their tentacles can be obstacles in some area? Or what if we go really cartoony and make a character out of one? Somehow personify the way these jellies slowly float around into a carefree NPC…” The Stone Fish stood out to me as well, being so well blended into its environment that we could only spot the fish when it finally decided to move. The perfect camouflage against a rocky environment is perfect for a sneaky enemy that can ambush you on your adventure if you swim too closely. Ideas such as these were being scribbled into a notebook throughout the day, at various exhibits. 

We ended up staying the entire day at the aquarium, practically from opening to close! Spending the day surrounded by a myriad of sea creatures must have worked its magic, because since then our general productivity has increased and so have the amount of new creative ideas for the game. It’s an exciting time, and one that I hope we’ll get to have as a team again in the future, with even more of the team!

So if it’s been some time since you last visited an aquarium yourself, and you’re looking forward to Seahorse Saga, why not see if you can visit one? Maybe you’ll find something of interest to inspire you, too! Anyway, thank you all for reading and keeping up with our game! Hopefully we’ll have a more technical update for you soon!

-Tris ⭐

Project Owner & Design Lead