The Stage for Subjectivity

The art direction of Anamnesis: The Eidolon Tapestries is not merely an aesthetic choice; it is a core component of the game’s design philosophy. It is engineered to serve the Core Pillars, particularly the Subjective Interface, and to empower both the player’s interpretation and the community’s creativity.

The approach is built on a single, guiding principle: the world is a stage, and the character’s perception is the lighting, the set design, and the special effects. The graphical fidelity is not in the objective representation of the world, but in the subjective experience of it.

Projecting Reality onto the Player

Many story generators, like RimWorld, use a simple graphical style as an “imagination-scaffolding,” a canvas onto which the player projects their own narrative details.

ATET inverts this relationship.

Intentional simplicity of the world is utilized to create a stable, readable baseline. The true visual complexity and artistic expression come from the Subjective Interface. The character’s internal state; their Faith, their Memories, their Needs; is projected outward onto this simple world, and in turn, onto the player.

A pristine corporate lobby is, objectively, a set of clean, low-poly models. But to an Incarnation with a Faith that [order_is_oppression], the Subjective Interface will render that lobby with a cold, sterile blue filter, the lines will appear unnaturally sharp, and a faint, oppressive hum will be added to the soundscape.

The player does not imagine the character’s feelings; they see and hear them.

The Medium: Stylized 3D from a Retro Perspective

The game will be rendered in a stylized, low-poly 3D. The primary camera perspective will be top-down, using an isometric projection; giving the player a clear view of their Incarnation and their immediate environment.

This choice is a deliberate solution to several key design challenges:

1. Aesthetic Accessibility & Community: While 2D art can be beautiful, stylistic preferences within 2D communities are often strong and highly compartmentalized. A clean, well-executed, and stylized 3D aesthetic provides a more neutral and universally accessible canvas, reducing the aesthetic friction that can sometimes prevent players from engaging with a game.

2. Empowering Modders (Confluence): A core goal of ATET is to foster a vibrant modding community. A low-poly 3D pipeline drastically lowers the barrier to entry for asset creation. It is far more feasible for amateur artists to create and integrate simple 3D models and textures than it is to produce high-quality, animated, and perspective-correct 2D sprites that match a pre-existing style. This empowers the community to meaningfully expand the game’s visual universe.

3. Mechanical Necessity: A true 3D world is essential for the robust implementation of the Subjective Interface. Dynamic visual distortions, perceptual filters, complex lighting, and true object occlusion are all far more tractable and powerful in a 3D rendering pipeline than they would be in a 2D one. This allows the full realization of a UI that is the character’s soul made manifest.

A Modular World

To support the vast diversity of species and the deep crafting systems, the asset design philosophy is one of modularity.

• Character Creation: Species are not monolithic models. An Incarnation’s body is an assembly of swappable parts: heads, torsos, limbs, and unique biological features. This visual modularity is a direct reflection of the game’s lore. It allows the hand-crafted machine nature of the Artisan to be visually real, and it provides the necessary framework for any future systems involving Eidolon-level genetic crafting or body modification.

• Object Design: This principle extends to all Objects. A crafted Weapon is not a single, pre-designed asset. Its final appearance is a composite, determined by the materials used in its Crafting. A sword forged with a hilt of [sacred_wood] and a blade of [recycled_plasteel] will look and feel fundamentally different from one made of [alien_chitin] and [living_crystal]. This ensures the player’s choices are reflected not just in stats, but in the tangible, visual identity of the world they inhabit.