The Creative Minds Behind Laya’s Horizon
Learn all about the development of our latest title from the team leads at Snowman.
Behind all of our projects is a passionate group of creative thinkers who all equally contribute to the development process. From start to finish, artists breathe life into each visual, designers craft unique player experiences, developers implement functionality and producers orchestrate a perfect blend of creativity and execution.
When we first decided to embark on the journey of creating Laya’s Horizon, we never imagined it would grow into the project it is today. Since our initial prototypes, the concepts have evolved so much and we couldn’t be more proud of our team for what they’ve achieved.
From the characters’ unique designs to the intuitive control scheme, each element of the game was thoughtfully considered with our incredible team leads spearheading the way. In this special behind-the-scenes look, we’ll be uncovering the challenges and successes of each department throughout the development process of Laya’s Horizon.
The Inevitability of Gravity
In the early phases of prototyping, we had to take into consideration what would happen after players reached the end of their run. Taking flight from the top of a mountain meant inevitably reaching the bottom, so we had to consider how we’d implement a seamless loop that would encourage players to come back for more.
In addition, maintaining the rules and physics of real-life wingsuiting was crucial to creating an authentic flying experience. However, we still wanted to give players space for recovery in case any missteps happened on their journey. Snowman’s Lead Designer, Jesse Baker, recalls the initial risks and necessary adjustments made during prototyping:
“Due to the wingsuiting-inspired flight model, we were committed to two fundamental truths: the player can’t stop moving and the player is always falling. On top of this, our biggest question was: what happens if you crash?
After many attempts at braking-style mechanics, we eventually realized that if we let Laya use her cape like a parachute she’d be able to slow down without breaking the rules of wingsuit flight. It also served as a way for players to land and end their run early, solving multiple issues at once. Adding landing spots also helped alleviate the stress of always moving and allowed players more opportunities to take in the scenery and plan their next jump.
Level design for missions depended heavily on the slope of the area to make flight feel good, which was a challenge thanks to our world being a fully connected space. We helped reduce the danger of the ground by introducing an ‘air cushion’ mechanic which pushes you off the ground temporarily while close. Introducing Updraft wind zones also helps players regain height mid-run. It took a lot of tuning fall speed, air cushion strength, onboarding polish and starting area design before we began to see new players be able to tackle the early game with confidence.
The answer to what happens when you crash probably changed the most out of any mechanic in the game. Early in the project, we tried many iterations for the ‘tumble’, including instantly ending a run, reflecting off the surface and bouncing into a slow-mo state where you could re-orient yourself by steering. These proved to be too difficult for our playtesters and often led to multiple crashes in a row. The tumble made its biggest leap when we realized that we could find a safe place to bounce the player to by simply ‘rewinding’ their position back in time. For a long time after adding the rewind, we actually kept the slow-mo reorient mechanic but it proved to be too confusing and hurt the flow of the game too much. The final version of the tumble simply rewinds the player back and lets them keep flying with a brief increase to turn speed to help avoid danger.”
By implementing a kinesthetic control scheme and more opportunities for recovery, we’re confident that players can fully appreciate the feel of the game while soaring through the unique and captivating visuals of each biome.
Storytelling Through Art
When working on our last title, Lucky Luna, we intentionally made the decision to leave out any major dialogue, prioritizing gameplay and giving players enough space to imagine Luna’s story on their own. So when it came time to brainstorm our initial concepts for Laya’s Horizon, creating a thriving community with its own unique personalities was uncharted territory for us.
We quickly learned that a special attention to the game’s visual aesthetic would be important in capturing the vibrant culture of the Windfolk while also creating an immersive experience for players.
3D Art Director, Pallavi Maruvada, highlights the importance of storytelling through set dressing while overcoming obstacles along the way:
“After finalizing our concepts, my primary responsibility was to preserve our vision for the game while transitioning from a 2D to 3D world. This involved recognizing all the restrictions that came with it and ensuring that our final game visuals did justice to the intended art style.
Storytelling is a significant part of our game and the art team tried to achieve it through extremely meticulous and handcrafted set dressing. Along with this, they included interesting details and fun easter eggs throughout the island. Every little corner you fly to in the game reveals a tiny story of its own!
One of my most favourite parts of our game is how inclusive and diverse our characters are. When designing them, we aimed to include a broad spectrum of people, so you’ll find characters of all ages, races, genders and vocations in our game.
When creating a vast, open-world game, running into challenges is inevitable. One of the hurdles we faced early on was with the enormous and highly tessellated Unity terrain we built. Due to its sheer size and vertex count, it was nearly impossible to work with and load in-game without affecting our frame rate. To optimize it, we divided it into multiple organic chunks based on different biomes, reduced the vertex count by retopologizing it while keeping the lay of the land and moved away from Unity terrain. This, in turn, helped us manage our terrain shaders and culled areas more efficiently.
Looking back at how it all started with beautiful concepts to now, where we have a full-fledged gargantuan mountain with many different biomes, towns, landmarks and characters, it feels like an incredible accomplishment.”
The Challenges of Visual Simplicity
While the aesthetic of Laya’s Horizon might appear minimalistic at first glance, underneath the surface is a multitude of intricate systems that work together to bring life to our visuals.
When it comes to integrating our assets into actual gameplay, transforming each object into a functional element is a complex task that requires careful attention to detail and technical expertise.
For Snowman’s Lead Technical Artist, David Kirk, developing creative solutions was a crucial aspect to navigate the game’s visual simplicity:
“There is a lot going on under the hood when it comes to the visuals in the game.
Trying to make this densely populated world at such a high level of quality with a small team was no easy feat. A number of tasks, that would normally take a significant amount of hours, required a lot of creative solutions.
The capes in particular were a huge hurdle. We came up with several versions of how it might work in the end. Cloth is not your friend when it comes to making games and here at Snowman we have a pretty high standard of quality when it comes to how our games look.
With the unique art style and the speed at which the player can move, we had to explore and include a lot of different tricks and tools to try to make the player as aware of the objects around them as possible and how close they are to them in the blink of an eye that they are on the screen.
Many ideas and innovations that we wanted to include in the game had very little precedent in other games. From the obvious example of our flight controls, to some more subtle features such as our atmosphere and scene depth. Even our beloved cast of characters had quite a few challenges amongst them.
In the end, however, with some wild ideas, adjustments and hard work, I think we really came up with a game that we hope people are going to be talking about for a while.”
Hidden Heroes
It’s common for the overall aesthetic and feel of a game to capture a player’s attention, but behind the scenes there’s a quiet but mighty team that plays an important role to ensure the game’s functionality aligns with its intended design.
In meticulously constructing a network of interconnected systems, our developers play a pivotal role in making our games a smooth and enjoyable experience. Their efforts are instrumental in transforming our projects beyond their visual appeal into a fully realized mobile experience.
Technical Director, Arthur Daurio, reflects on what it’s like working behind the scenes, giving other departments the space to shine and the value of working with a close-knit team:
“Being a Technical Director at a company as design-forward as Snowman, my main goal is helping other departments fulfill their vision. This involves making tools, automating build deliveries and generally keeping things running smoothly.
It’s an interesting job because if I’m doing it well it often goes unnoticed by the public. Players are less likely to leave feedback when the game is performing well, a menu is functioning as expected or whether a save transferred perfectly between devices. But they’ll definitely speak up if something goes wrong. In our department, we know the job was done correctly when a player is able to provide feedback on the overall game design, visuals and audio. It means we made it work as expected and let other departments shine.
Judging by the first week of feedback, it seems we’ve succeeded in accomplishing our goals. Laya’s Horizon is a huge technical accomplishment the whole team is really proud of.
I’d say a major key to our success is building multidisciplinary teams. When you work at indie studios, you get to wear a lot of hats and everybody develops really interesting skills. Forming a team with diverse skill sets is one part of the process, another is actually recognizing and utilizing those skills as needed. As an example, we had a programmer with us that was also a musician and had worked on the audio side of games before, so he was invaluable during audio integration.
What I’m most proud of is that our team enjoyed making Laya’s Horizon. An unfortunate reality in the games industry is that negative work environments often rob passionate developers of enjoying the game-making process. Snowman is truly a breath of fresh air where every person working on this game wanted it to be amazing because they love what they do, were treated well and they cared about the player experience. This approach gets better results than forced overtime and indefinite crunch.”
The amount of collaboration, creativity and passion that have fueled this project since the beginning has been such a special experience and one that we’ll take into all of our future endeavours. With the guidance and dedication of our team leads Laya’s Horizon is a true testament of who we are and what we strive for as a studio.
We hope that you’ll be able to see how much attention and care was poured into every aspect of the game and that you’ll continue to enjoy soaring through the island for many years to come!
Stay up to date on future news and updates by following along on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at @layashorizon. Talk with our community of players and join the Snowman Discord server!
If you’re a member of the press who’s interested in chatting about this release, please contact press@builtbysnowman.com.
