For such a futuristic installation, we thought about having a giant conveyer belt to distribute and stock supply cases.

Since the storage room is small, we had to find some ways to increase the amount of food it can store. This has been done by opening the ceiling area and the floor, covering them with a thick, nearly indestructible glass.

The mood needed to convey something both mysterious and dangerous. We achieved this goal, using red and blue colors, that mixed into a more purple ambient light during the “night”.

In cinema, this pink / purple spectrum serves to represent the unknown.

In Amaan Jindal’s room, one of the crew members of the ARES station, the view of the ship’s aquarium creates captivating light patterns, casting caustics on the walls with a soothing grace.

This peaceful and comforting ambiance is essential for Amaan, who tends to be stressed in his daily life.

To help you relax too, we have created a several-minute-long relaxing video, accompanied by original music.

Feel free to watch it : PEACEFUL AQUARIUM Underwater Sound ASMR / AMBIENCE

During their exploration, the player will discover memory data cubes, indicating to their personal neural interface (K9) the past recording of a scene in that area. This way, the player will explore past conversations among the crew members to better understand life and the individuals present in the station.

New update on animated cans ! Now there are five of them, offering a variety of colors and flavors: energy drinks, sparkling waters, fruit juices, or sodas.

Choose your favorite!

Until now, the station in which the player navigates had no external existence. Therefore, it seemed essential to give it an identity through its windows. We began this process by working on the view from Miranda’s bedroom window.

This station represents the culmination of human knowledge, boasting cutting-edge technology. It was sent into orbit around an exoplanet to study the greatest discovery in human history.

We’ve been struggling for multiple months building this corridor and had to change the whole design, multiple times. Since STRAND is such a long adventure we both could improve between 2 rooms design.

As such, going back to this very first design was much simpler to work on and we managed to redesign it, apply look dev for final approval in 3 weeks. Our dear friends,

” Freespace87 ” and ” LEGION ” taught us more about gravity, what space travel requires technically speaking to function.

Handrails are now added on the ceiling, walls, to allow the crew to navigate in case of a 0 gravity emergency. Gas Masks have been designed for such situation. We also figured out how to deepen our lore as this will be our next biggest challenge.

Here is a subtle touch of futurism, suggesting to each player that the plot unfolds in a hypothetical future.

In this universe, resources are so abundant that the creation of animated cans has become commonplace. These cans contribute to making the environment more dynamic and vibrant. Explore 2 out of the 5 can designs that the player can inspect and encounter during their adventure!

Which one do you prefer? Sparkl or Orange one?

We are about to finalize the creation of the first room in the station: Miranda’s room!

Some adjustments are still needed in the room, but Miranda’s essence is already present, embodied by her personal belongings, posters of her favorite movies, and personalized decor.

We will soon begin the final phase for the corridor!

A week ago, we embarked on our Twitch adventure. We provide everyone with the opportunity to follow the development of Strand in real-time, ask questions, and share our knowledge in the field.

Alex’s Twitch channel
Antek’s Twitch channel

You might think and hope using those pods will free yourself from you’re never ending journey.

The station, this giant metal and steel prison won’t let you do it, unless you find a way to break through all the phenomenons you are experiencing. There won’t be an easy way out and nobody is coming to help you exit your infinite loop.

Clues, important items, await you inside those unusable exit doors.

This week, we delve a bit further into the details by incorporating textures into the environment. Today, the bathroom takes the spotlight, offering a refined and functional space with a natural style. With its basalt wall, members will find a fragment of their home planet, giving the place a comforting and peaceful atmosphere.

Miranda’s personal belongings, along with a few additional details, will enhance this bathroom.

It is evident that Miranda also listens to her music on vinyl records, which she took care to bring to the station along with her turntable to accompany her long days of writing and research.

This asset allows launching music to alter the sound atmosphere and could well serve as an enigma later on.

This is likely the last specimen within the universe of a 1981 Verne collector’s typewriter, and it is currently in orbit.

Miranda uses it to compose the narratives of what could be humanity’s greatest discovery. If this testimony is meant to leave a mark on history, might as well do it with style.

Like a floating blue pearl, eyeing on our protagonist, this giant planet comforts us in this ever-lasting loop. The giant teal trails that striate the planet, are huge gathering of planktons, visible from the space. No human form as ever landed foot on this planet, that have been preserved from all kinds of pollution and destruction. This intriguing Eco system will ever be observed from the station only, as our researcher team wants to preserve this natural paradise.

The only thing our protagonist can really do is to watch. Her very loyal telescope will help observing what could have been a paradise, a second Earth, that humanity is deemed unworthy of.

This arcade cabinet will be such a central, important element of the gameplay and will be used and crucial until the end of the game. You may wonder why it is still working. You may wonder why it is so important …

Those funny looking characters will follow you until you manage to solve all the riddles, puzzles and mystery of the space station. All your questions will find their intriguing answers through your quest to solve you’re never-ending day.

After numerous art posts, we realized how blurry our game concept was to other people, despite labeling it as a puzzle game. Since we want to build a community around this niche type of game, it was important to us to showcase more of our gameplay. In this quick walkthrough we are showcasing a series of puzzles that the player will have to solve. Keep in mind those will be the most simple one, as this will serve as an introduction to the game.

Strand will be based on an escape room design. Everything will have its importance in the long run. We want the player to be fully immersed in this space station and act, think, as he would do in the real life to escape this situation.

We also thought about more experienced puzzle game players and will prepare a side series of serious and highly challenging riddles, games for them. This will be optional and won’t stop the players from finishing the game. So far, our game passed the 2 hours gameplay content and our testers have been seriously challenged already. Finding the right balance in terms of difficulty is probably our biggest challenge gameplay wise.

The research station is also a living space. Members will live there for several years, so it must be warm and welcoming. It is neither cold and white nor industrial and dirty. It is… a bit of everything.

Like most personal living spaces, it is a blend of old and new, vintage and contemporary. It is essential for us that these two very different and contrasting styles come together and clash to create this unique style.

Miranda contributes to this aesthetic with her love of old objects. Those books from another time, with that particular smell that tablets don’t have. She is among those who believe that reading an old edition of Jules Verne has more flavor than a digital edition.

After improving our environment as a whole, we wanted to get each room a unique touch, to make sure the player discovers new small universes, each time a door opens.

In this one we are planning to install a huge aquarium, to give a soft, although spectacular mood to the room. This was meant to be a surprise for the players to discover and it was hard for us to decide to “spoil” this, to serve our social media communication.

We will have later on prepare many bigger surprises. Deciding what to show and what to keep secret will be a real concern in the long run.

As the devil hides in the details, we had to put extra work on every asset, while adding the props.

Through the choice of the props for this room, you will be able to project yourself in the world of a messy, brilliant and sensitive writer that is Miranda. Our protagonist have been traveling quit a bit and gathered all sorts of souvenirs, to make the space station like home.

We opted for a strong contrast with the vintage aspect of our props and the sci-fi look of the station. Miranda’s bag will be wearing the country flags she’s been to. The manual writing machine, even though obsolete, helps Miranda connect with her inner writer soul as she needs to touch things, feel them. The vintage, Venetian, comfortable seats are hers and a strong reminder of Miranda’s European origins as she is a Frenchwoman. The goal here was to create a very cozy, warm environment in which Miranda can live like inside a cocoon. As a melomaniac, our character also needs to immerse herself into music in order to be productive. Having a strong taste for vintage, Miranda picked her loyal vinyl collection and her turntable.

Our new challenge at this step was to make clothing since this was a first time for both of us. It took serious effort to pull this off. Learning Marvelous designer, generating our first garments, sculpt them, bake them into a low poly, within a short period of time, humbled us, before the task to yet be accomplished. The good thing, is that the greater the challenge, the brighter the reward. As we are getting closer to a final product, modeling wise, we are also slowly and steadily adding textures. Major lighting rework have been done, to match a saddest mood as we want to make the scene both melancholic and beautiful. Seeing the result of months of work on separate aspects of the room, coming along and harmoniously live together, gave us an extra motivation kick for the upcoming challenges.

The more process we make, the prouder I get.

There are numerous elements in the station with which you can interact. The soda dispenser is one of them. You have 3 credits that you can use as you wish. Lemon flavor or even an energy drink, a variety of choices are available to you.

Through visual narration, we want the player to deduce the lore and subtleties of the world they are in. And the brands will contribute to this experience through details and informations.

If you want to understand the story in its entirety, you’ll have to be observant and attentive.

The station you are exploring orbits around an exoplanet still very little known by the crew.

Through each window, by its presence and its vastness, this planet brings us back to our human condition and our insignificant place in the galaxy.

It embodies the mysteries that will forever remain unsolved and out of humanity’s reach.

You are alone, and you are but a strand in the universe.

After practicing our new workflow and style for a while, it slowly became easier to produce complete environments, closer to the vision we had.

The Kitchen was such a challenging room to design as there are a lot of puzzle to solve concentrated within the same area. It took us a lot of backs and forth to make this room cozy, functional and aesthetically pleasing.

To approach a whole room like this, it takes smaller steps to follow, in order to insure quality.

First, we’ve built the block out, using cubes from Unreal Engine. Then, we decided to design the floor first, as this will guide the amount of details we want overall in the scene and where to put our structures around. We had to rebuild it several times before achieving the right layout, hitting the right balance between details and empty spaces.

Once done, it was a matter of iterating the whole scene by passe. The biggest mistake we could make here was to be focused on one piece at a time and realize that they don’t match each other. Here is a screenshot from our real time scene, in-game footage. Again, we’ve done some compositing on it to improve the look, but this could be what we are aiming for.

In Strand, players can inspect objects, and sometimes download them to their personal neural computer (K9). These downloaded objects will be of crucial importance and will be used later in your adventure.

To facilitate interactions, the reticle will display the action to be performed when inspecting an object. And if you are able to save or download an object, the “download” action along with its shortcut will also be displayed.

After observing that the player’s attention was focused on the center of the screen, we decided to gather all important information or feedback in the center of the screen. These elements were previously spread out on the sides of the screen, making it difficult to read them. So, you will now see the download bar and the confirmation message in the center of the screen.

We also noticed that many players didn’t instinctively rotate or move objects. Therefore, this time, we decided, exceptionally, to add the actions available to you during the inspection for your first 5 inspections.

There you have it! All our testers now have a grasp of all the object inspection functionalities.

Intimacy is a very difficult feeling to capture within an environment, without using the proper lighting. We had to think outside our own defined knowledge to make something appealing that would tell a story immediately.

Lost in space and alone, we wanted the player to feel the immensity of the “prison” he is in through this big circular window giving view on the planet. We have chosen this kind of shape to be visually strong and mark the spirits.

All successful designs have a very iconic shape embedded in that pushes the known design boundaries further. Even though we do not have the pretension to successfully create an iconic design right know, this is what we are trying to achieve, constantly.

Since we are concealed in a small environment and needed to gain as much visual value as possible, we decided to “carve” our details, furniture and elements into the circular shape. Everything needs to fit the curvature of the bed frame and live together. It was quite challenging to find a way to add details, without breaking our main circle shape. With time and multiple attempts, we finally got what we were searching for.

To capture the lonely, bitter sweat feeling we wanted, we used a mix of warm and cold lights. The orange light in movies is used to channel the cozy feeling, whereas the blue light is used to transmit the sci-fi idea, or even sadness. Our image isn’t final as its main purpose is to display the main mood. For the presentation, we had to make a few lighting tweaks and overall modifications, but this will be very close to our vision. Ultimately, we are committed to making it look much better than this.

We do hope you will find this design as appealing as we do.

As we worked towards a general style we quickly realized how much the devil would be hiding into the details. Every gaps, panel lines, pipes had to be thought, had to look as aesthetically pleasing as functional.

It took us multiple attempts before reaching a result that could please both of us, but we eventually achieved something we could be proud of and show to others. Too busy or empty has always been the main challenge any concept designer have to face and have been a real dilemma for us.

In one hand we wanted to keep the player’s eyes nourished, on the other, we had to remember that interior design had its own creative approach and that “Less is more”.

Being used to create combatmechs, complex mechanical designs and weaponry, changing mindset was a real challenge at the beginning of the project. We also needed something efficient, as time is a constraint. Our style needed to be pleasing to the eyes and easy to build, easy to iterate for us.

We all have the fear of emptiness when it comes to creation. The white page, the non-detailed areas, the silence in a conversation. To achieve this kind of quality in a timely manner, we needed to embrace those feelings and use those empty spaces to our advantage.

A feeling of guilt arose when doing so as we firstly thought it was a lazy way to design. Although the more we tried to simplify and capture the essence of our visual language in a fewer details, the more challenges we had to face. By doing so, we eliminated the unnecessary noise in our sets and pieces, we built something the eyes won’t be wary to look at.

Our main inspiration came from Japanese industrial designs. There is a touch of “just what it takes” in it, to make things exciting and not overwhelmingly detailed. Here is a small sample of some details we gathered at the same place, just to show you what we came up with.

In Strand, you will need to interact with various devices placed in the environment to progress. It is crucial for us that this experience is smooth and natural. To achieve this, we have designed our interaction to be as diegetic and minimalistic as possible. In fact, in general, we want it to be as diegetic and streamlined as possible.

Naturally, we have marked the center of the screen and your cursor with a simple small white dot (note this detail for later) that is very discreet but essential for effective aiming.

On the other hand, we have decided to adorn our computers with white interfaces that are like beams of light in a station with dimmed lights. They are like guiding stars in the darkness that will lead you to your destination.

Okay… First problem… I’m aiming at a white computer with a white dot. Well, it quickly became apparent that we were unable to aim correctly as we couldn’t perceive our reticle properly. The solution was quite quick and reinforced our initial idea:

Yes! A mouse cursor. Obvious. As soon as you aim at a computer, your cursor disappears, and the computer’s mouse takes over, solving our initial problem.

I haven’t actually told you what you can actually do with these computers. You can click on buttons, open windows, but most importantly, type text into fields that ask you to do so… at random. Passwords. Still with the goal of making computer use obvious: a second problem arises. If you want to type WASD (or ZQSD for some) as a super-secret password, my character also moves at the same time. Annoying…

In fact, all you need to do is click on a text field and start typing. At that moment, moving is impossible. Note that you can still move your camera.

If you type the correct password or move your mouse out of the action area, you will naturally regain your ability to move.

After testing, no one really noticed. Everything seemed instinctive and natural.

Final result:

If you’re interested in how we did this, let us know in the comments, and we’ll make a little tutorial!

As a main workflow and guideline, we wanted to make sure the whole environment could “live” by itself. It needs to be up to standard with a simple, plain grey shader and lighting only . This forced us to come up with more interesting shapes, brighter ideas and better decisions storytelling wise. It always been easy to add rich details to make something interesting. By taking a minimalistic approach, we understood how challenging it really was to have a good design when stripped to bare bones.

Our main challenge is to make the whole environment user-friendly and the most believable as possible, as we are building it based on real life construction constraints. Everything we do, needs to feel logical, manufactured and functional, while staying in the science fiction realm.

The image above is a screenshot of our game, real time scene, with minor color and lighting tweaks as we have not finalized the latter yet. The overall design might remain the same even though we are aware that it would require a serious second pass to match our vision and standards.

The reason behing us making, a corridor first was to make sure we could produce interesting and visually appealing shapes on the most basic, mundane piece of the space station.

We shall share more elaborate and polished visuals as our journey goes one. Key elements, rooms and more will be illustrating our weekly numeric diary and be proof of the words we dared to put down so far.

Throughout “STRAND”, you will be playing as Miranda, a brilliant, messy writer and scientist whose mission is to solve the mystery of her ever-repeating day, within a deserted research space station. Riddles, clues and various documents will help through your journey. EXAMINING will be crucial.

Our deepest desire for this game would be to cognitively challenge people on a high level. Ingenuity and reflection are in decline as they are rapidly and broadly replaced by quick adrenaline rushes and devastating instant gratifications. Our ambition with “STRAND” is to remind people how rewarding it is to solve complex situations and puzzles, how smart they really can be.

As we set a high target gameplay wise, we also needed to raise our design standards beyond past limits and aim towards a AAA quality. We want to create games for gamers, the ones we wanted to play to, with the deepest love and dedication to the craft.

We want to earn the respect of our community and peers. “STRAND” won’t be just another product, but a polished, crafted gem within expert hands. This is the beginning of our adventure, and we do hope you will be thrilled to follow us through it.

Everything started during a mundane apartment visit in which I could meet my best friend, Antek. Who could have predicted that fate would help put together two random persons with visions and goals that would match so quickly and effortlessly ?

Just out of a simple Discord conversation, a few meals at home, a friendship was born. As two ambitious souls, we decided to put this friendship and common vision on trial, by making our own video game. A 2 (crazy) man army, striving to create the best game as possible with the available resources. We’ve decided to record our journey on this blog and hope you will dive into it with us.

It has been years now we felt disappointed by the entertainment industry as a whole. Not only as consumers since we are avid gamers, but also as actors of it, since we are both working a full time jobs within said industry. We felt let down by the studios we looked up for, especially AAA ones, by people we dreamt to meet and work with. The bigger the disappointment, the more urgent we felt we had to do something. Questions arose. What if we could create employment, gather a huge community behind us ?

What if we could inspire the next generation of artists, the way we’ve been inspired ? What if the flames of the craft were still burning like distant stars inside of us ? Maybe this was just another deep freedom call for us, it was visceral. Exigent. Louder every day…

A call we could no longer ignore, a call we decided to answer. This was day one of this journey towards our dreams and “Strand” would be our first step.