Forensic Friday 82: The Great Rebrand & Steam Next Fest Post Mortem

Originally posted by Friday

Hey Readers!

It's been a while, hasn't it? Forensic Friday has been dormant because development has been exhausting, and honestly, writing these blogs on a Friday has been the last thing on my mind. The longer I put it off, the harder it became to catch up—so here we are. Instead of covering every change in the past two months (because there are too many), I want to focus on one major shift: The Great Rebranding.

[h3]Why Are We Rebranding?[/h3]
During Steam Next Fest, we realized that the game was struggling with first impressions. People kept comparing it to Rimworld and Prison Architect, sometimes even assuming it was a Rimworld mod or a clone. That wasn’t the reaction we wanted. While we originally thought the familiar art style would be a plus, it has actually worked against us.

Beyond that, as our game’s identity evolved into a corporate science dystopia with absurd anomalies, the art style we started with no longer fit. The game needed to look like the experience we were trying to create. To fix this, we’re making three major changes:

• The Art Style – Moving to a “Corporate Memphis” aesthetic with flat colors and a grungy pencil texture, ditching Rimworld-style borders and shading.
  
• The UI – A complete overhaul to distance ourselves from Rimworld and create a unique, distinct interface.
  
• The Storytellers – Storytellers, as they exist now, are too tied to Rimworld. Instead of removing them entirely, we’re reworking them as Administrators who influence contracts and unique events rather than direct story generation.
  

[h3]Finding Our Identity[/h3]
This is bigger than just an art overhaul—it’s about defining Containcorp as its own thing. We’re also changing terminology:

• Architect Mode → Build Mode
  
• Grants → Contracts
  
• Storytellers → Administrators
  
• Story Events → Incidents
  
• Raids → Invasions
  

Even the branding is changing to move away from Rimworld-like associations. We’ve removed the storytellers from our marketing, refocusing on the game’s absurdist corporatism and anomalies.

[h3]Injecting New Influences[/h3]
Instead of just Rimworld and Prison Architect, we’re drawing from Severance, SCP, Loki’s TVA, Dune, WALL-E, and more. For gameplay, we’re taking inspiration from Resident Evil, Half-Life’s Black Mesa, Portal’s Aperture Science, and Evil Genius.


Ultimately, this is about making Containcorp stand on its own. We don’t want it to be “like Rimworld” or “a Prison Architect mod”—we want people to recognize it as Containcorp...

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/2483140/Containcorp/