Hi all! Dex here. This week, I wanted to share a bit about the world we’ve crafted for this game.

Like Ave stated in the last post, this game started off as a dream, so the surreal aspect of the world is something that we wanted to maintain. But we didn’t want it to veer off into nonsensical dream logic, just keep a strange tinge to everything. A mix of the familiar and unfamiliar.

The setting is urban fantasy, with an emphasis on the everyday. This direction kept us grounded in how we wanted to portray the world: this wasn’t a world where sweeping fantasy epics could easily happen, but instead one where your cell phone is powered by arcane energies and you have to call pest control to exorcise the spirits that infest your microwave. Magic has seeped into every aspect of this world, but it’s a relatively normal-feeling one. One where you can believe that people live normal, relatively comfortable lives, just with the added wonders and problems that living in a world full of magic might bring.

That’s not to say nothing big ever happens in this world - under the surface there’s still ancient evils and strange occurrences, but it’s blended in seamlessly with this everyday world. You don’t notice the seal of the dark lord when it’s just there above your head every day, and the war against him doesn’t really faze you when you read about it in history textbooks.

Another aspect of the world we wanted to emphasize is that magic is relatively new, historically speaking. Instead of settings where magic has always been prevalent and technology was simply built on top of an existing fantasy world, in this world magic became prominent during the Industrial Revolution alongside electricity and steam power, changing from something scarce to something much more common. This meant that the majority of “early magic” is actually more industrial magitech, which then transformed gradually into the more pervasive, everyday magic in people’s daily lives. This lends it to be less like some kind of ritual practice passed down through generations and more like an extension of technology itself.

This also means new magic is constantly being developed and sold by large corporations in ways that we in our capitalist society are familiar with - and all the baggage that brings. You can walk down the street and see a billboard ad for “teeth whitening runes” or have to suffer through a pop-up video for essential oils infused with “spiritual energy” (except these actually are - not that they’re any more effective though!).

One way this world differs significantly from ours, though, is that rogue spirits are a common danger, and entire industries and cultural practices have developed around keeping spirits in check and protecting people from spirit attacks. We’ll go more in depth about spirits in a later post, but this is the reason why schools like the Salem Academy of the Arcane exist - they’re meant to teach people self-defense against this common threat, among other things.

Anyway I hope you’ve enjoyed this glimpse into the world we’ve created! Take care, and see you next week!

-Dex