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[rickardwestman]

The artwork is simply gorgeous.. 

Thanks! I love to make detailed art like this and we kind of didn't want to make a tiled world, so it was a win win thing I guess. Fits our small two man team pretty good too

Woah. It's quite a leap from the previous style. It's inspiring to see people passionate enough about their vision to reincarnate abandoned projects.

Yeah, we felt that the robot version could have been a solid puzzle game. But after a while we didn't really feel emotionally connected to it. So it started with some small graphical changes and some very interesting discoveries within the core design that kind of lead us to start over in a new diection. So it was never really abandoned, just redone. And that decision opened up a whole world of new possibilities and interesting interactive situations. But we absolutely believe that being passionate about what we do is very important.

Yeah, to step back and rethink your game essentially from the ground up in at least one aspect is pretty admirable. Very nice graphics, too - reminds me a lot of Bastion.

If we wouldn't have questioned our own project in the way we did we wouldn't have been where we are right now. And if we compair the fairly uninspirational robotic level puzzler of Pathfinder to what Pavilion is today it has been worth all the wasted graphics and scrapped level design.
Thanks for the kind words about the graphics. The isometric perspective is really fun to work with and it is the closes thing to 3D I guess. We absolutely want to push it as far as we can making a surreal but believable world.

I'm really curious about the gameplay, this game seems to be pretty unique and the artwork is awesome 
I'll be waiting for the demo!

Yeah, the gameplay is pretty much what made us excited about the whole game idea in the first place. The graphics pretty much just looks like this because it is what I love to do and feel comfortable with. Cool to hear that others like it too!
Hopefully we will have something playable in a couple of months

[Flink]

Woah. It's quite a leap from the previous style. It's inspiring to see people passionate enough about their vision to reincarnate abandoned projects.

Yeah, we felt that the robot version could have been a solid puzzle game. But after a while we didn't really feel emotionally connected to it. So it started with some small graphical changes and some very interesting discoveries within the core design that kind of lead us to start over in a new diection. So it was never really abandoned, just redone. And that decision opened up a whole world of new possibilities and interesting interactive situations. But we absolutely believe that being passionate about what we do is very important.

Yeah, to step back and rethink your game essentially from the ground up in at least one aspect is pretty admirable. Very nice graphics, too - reminds me a lot of Bastion.

If we wouldn't have questioned our own project in the way we did we wouldn't have been where we are right now. And if we compair the fairly uninspirational robotic level puzzler of Pathfinder to what Pavilion is today it has been worth all the wasted graphics and scrapped level design.
Thanks for the kind words about the graphics. The isometric perspective is really fun to work with and it is the closes thing to 3D I guess. We absolutely want to push it as far as we can making a surreal but believable world.

So yea, the following month from the IGF deadline last year was kind of a crucial period of reforming of the game. I think the thing that disturbed us the most with the gameplay was the lack of real depth. Instead of increasing the depth to making it more challenging the challenge in the game came from making the levels more complex(more robots on the levels, more clutter), which didn't really rely on understanding the underlying system.

Also at the time we got kind of inspired by this two brilliant design talks, which made us approach the core design of the game from another perspective. I highly recommend anyone interested in game design to watch them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsT-5VSqk8I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGSeLSmOALU

One other thing we didn't mention was that after we rethought the whole project and got a new prototype up and running was that we applied for some government funding for taking the prototype one step further. So that went through and we've been lucky to work full-time on the project the latest months. In that progress we had to create a design document so we have some visuals that we haven't shown to anyone yet and I thought we start posting some of them here, tigsource exclusive.

[Skomakar'n]

...

Dear OP,
this is gorgeous.

Regards,
amazed fan.

Moar!

Oh, and them famous Jon Blow talks which I have yet to see. Thanks for those links as well!

I really like the lighting of the art. Great way to weave some light into the otherwise dark scenes, making everything look very appealing. Words can't express how much I love that picture with the great moon in the background. The colours are lovely as well. I can't say no to green tint in movies and games.

Is that a balloon basket floating by the moon?

[rickardwestman]

...

Dear OP,
this is gorgeous.

Regards,
amazed fan.

Moar!

Oh, and them famous Jon Blow talks which I have yet to see. Thanks for those links as well!

I really like the lighting of the art. Great way to weave some light into the otherwise dark scenes, making everything look very appealing. Words can't express how much I love that picture with the great moon in the background. The colours are lovely as well. I can't say no to green tint in movies and games.

Is that a balloon basket floating by the moon?

Tackar Skomakar'n!

Yes, there is a bunch of interesting talks out there. Blow has some very thoughtful views that can be very helpful when looking for and discovering the fundamental things within the design. Of course you have to apply it to your own project.
We have looked at a couple of helpful talks during production and I am sure we can post some more talks if you/people are interested.

Yeah, a lot of the lighting came about just to make things stand out and read clear. In the end we would really likte this to feel like you are walking around in a painting.
And if you haven't seen our short teaser trailer just yet you should have a look at it. There you will find a moving moon and the answer to your question

[Flink]

Sorry for not posting anything for a while, but we've been busy drinking spiced Christmas wine and eating Christmas ham, but here's a little something Rickard put together for you guys!

Merry Christmas!

[rickardwestman]

Hey!

A bunch of people seemed curious about the gameplay and we are kind of torn about this matter. We don't want to keep people completely in the dark but yet not spoil what is unique and interesting with Pavilion. Not that we want to keep the ideas to ourselves while in production but we think that the experience of the player will be much more profound when not knowing about certain  fundamental things.

And on the other hand we feel that we have something kind of new here, and there isn't really any other games that has explored our ideas in the way we are doing. So it would be extremely hard to expalin what we are doing without being too specific and spoiling things.

It is like if you found a Mammoth and had to describe it to a friend who has never heard of a Mammoth before..
-Yeah, it's like a hairy elephant...
Just by saying that your friend would have a pretty good idea of what the Mammoth is.
But if you would have to describe a completely new animal that is unlike anything anyone has ever seen, then you would probably have to be more specific about things...

Of course, Pavilion isn't unlike anything anyone has ever seen, especially not on the visual surface, but it is still hard to describe and is probably best undiscribed to a certain degree.

The first (old)idea had a lot of similarities with Lemmings, different characters with different abilities. You basically commanded a bunch of robots/beings to move and use their abilities to open up a path through a labyrinth environment. Could most likely have been a solid puzzle game if taken further.
But it was when we started to think about who was traversing that open path that we really found something interesting.
Especially if the player wouldn't control the traversing character.



The image (purely explanational) shows the puzzle that kind of got us to scrap the whole Lemming idea and focus on the traversing character instead. It was a simple puzzle to begin with, but we found that it carried a lot of depth when we started to disect it. The image shows two solutions to the same puzzle, but that singel puzzle can harbour more solutions than that. And that was the starting point that opened up something completely new to us.
Just as nature has laws of gravity and things like that, we found that it could be applied to human actions as well....
 

   

[happymonster]

Interesting.. and intriguing!

[airman4]

Intriguing game !

The art is wonderful , love to see it in action

[Flink]

Sorry for the lack of updates guys, but we're now back from some well deserved winter vacation and are currently putting together the first act of the game, making the story board and designing new levels. So here's some of the story board images we produced, some of them will be in the game, some will not.

We were also thinking that we would show some video footage from the IGF build in the coming weeks, so keep an eye on this place. 

[overlordror]

Oh wow. Your visuals are really stunning. The way you're laying out puzzles could be especially devious, too. I can't wait to see more. How meaty do you expect the game to be once it's finished?

Also off-topic, I know you stated your release platforms as Windows and iOS, but I'm all for an Android version if that becomes a possibility. I love playing games on my Nexus tablet.

[Flink]

Thanks man! Indeed, the actual level design is probably the thing we spend most time on, even more then producing the final art or the code. Level design is a tricky thing, but also kind of the core of the game.

And actually, except Windows & iOS, it will also be released on Android, Mac OS X and Linux.

[Flink]

Forgot to answer about the length of the full experience; as it looks now we might clock in on 3 to 4 hours.

[happymonster]

Even without textures those latest pictures look really good, the colour choice with the more desaturated colours works really well I think.

What do you design those pictures with, an ingame editor, or a 3D modeler?

[Martyr]

I believe that you should update the OP, wonderful game by the way

[Flink]

Thanks guys!

The story board images were made in Photoshop if I'm not completely wrong, but rickardwestman could probably reveal more details about that process...