Ambrosia Sky News

[p][/p][p]Kaitlin Tremblay is the narrative director at Soft Rains. As a writer and narrative designer, they’ve worked on games such as Grindstone (CAPY Game), Watch Dogs Legion (Ubisoft), A Mortician’s Tale, and others. They are the author of two non-fiction books on video games: Ain’t No Place for a Hero: Borderlands (ECW Press, 2017) and Collaborative Worldbuilding for Video Games (CRC Press, 2023).[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]For this month’s devlog, we wanted to take the opportunity to introduce everyone to Dalia, our playable character of Ambrosia Sky! The story of Ambrosia Sky follows Dalia as she returns to her home in the Cluster after a 15-year absence, only to discover that the crisis is far worse than she expected — and that everyone she ever knew may or may not still be alive.[/p][p][/p][p]The Cluster is an agricultural colony established in the rings of Saturn, and it was one of humanity’s first-ever outposts in outer space. It was chosen as such because of naturally occurring alien fungus found in the asteroids and rocks there, providing an answer to one of humanity’s most pressing questions: how could we feed people as they flee a dying Earth to try and find a new home amongst the stars?[/p][p][/p][p]But it’s the people that make the Cluster what it is. It’s a mixture of folks from all walks of life–the descendants of people who were able to leave Earth and establish the agricultural colony. These are people Dalia once knew, the people she grew up with. But Dalia soon discovers that she will have to fulfill the other part of her Scarab duty, and lay her former neighbours to rest.[/p][p][/p][p]The characters of the world of Ambrosia Sky are its heart, grounding the crisis and the worldbuilding in human connections, fear, love, and the lengths we will go to save ourselves and each other. We’ll go deep into the other main characters of Ambrosia Sky in a subsequent devlog, but for now, I want to talk about Dalia Volkova, the protagonist of Ambrosia Sky.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Meet Dalia[/h3][p][/p][p]From the earliest stages of developing the plot and the backstory for Ambrosia Sky, we knew this being a homecoming story would be important for connecting the player’s journey in unravelling the crisis with the stories of people they must lay to rest. We wanted that insider perspective, a person who knows what is typical here and what is unusual, and can call that out to players.[/p][p][/p][p]Enter Dalia.[/p][p][/p][p]Dalia is a brilliant but emotionally unstable Scarab. While Dalia isn’t a true believer of the Scarab’s Ambrosia Project ethos (discussed in our developer log on the Scarabs), she has a strong stomach and is a capable scientist. She left her home to escape the closed, controlling life she had on the Cluster. Her stepmother, Hale, had grand plans for Dalia that Dalia didn’t want for herself. So Dalia left, and in doing so, she didn’t just abandon a controlling mother, but also her best friend and first-ever love, Maeve.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Born on the Cluster, Dalia was raised by her stepmother, Hale, the de facto leader of the Cluster colony. Dalia was a weird kid, growing up more interested in xenobiology than botany, but she enjoyed getting her hands dirty either way. Because the Cluster tended to recycle and reuse materials (thanks to a scarcity of new shipments and a lack of non-agricultural infrastructure), Dalia became skilled at tinkering, repairing, and reshaping the mechanical things around her.[/p][p][/p][p]Dalia felt at home among the systems of the Cluster, but began to feel alienated by her stepmother, Hale. Hale pushed Dalia to become something she wasn’t, and Dalia longed to escape her overbearing influence. So when a Scarab got called into the Cluster for a job, Dalia saw her opening. She could handle the more uncomfortable parts of the role, was smart, and asked the Scarab to train her. The Scarab agreed, on the condition that they leave immediately. Dalia left without saying goodbye. To anybody, even Maeve.[/p][p][/p][p]For the past 15 years, Dalia has been training as a Scarab, making a name for herself. She’s good at the job. Her clever mind, strong constitution, and impressive ability to compartmentalize her emotions make her an ideal Scarab (at least in her mind). Soon after, Dalia meets Maaz, a Scarab who becomes her best friend and work partner, and begins to develop a life for herself. She refuses to return to the Cluster, saying it’s because she’s afraid of Hale’s manipulation, but really, she’s scared of confronting the way she hurt Maeve by leaving without so much as a word.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Early concept art for the design of Dalia.[/p][p][/p][p]Then she gets the call that changes everything. A message from Hale, saying a crisis has engulfed the Cluster and a Scarab is needed—an unknown catastrophe, with an unknown death toll. Dalia returns, alone, and despite her experience and tools of the trade, she is unprepared for a homecoming like this. Dalia’s return is anything but heartwarming. Dalia must come to terms with her choices, as well as her survivor’s guilt, as she investigates the crisis that killed almost everybody she knew. Dalia will uncover a universe that is larger and weirder than she ever could’ve imagined.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Developing Dalia[/h3][p][/p][p]Dalia’s perspective is integral to the story of Ambrosia Sky. She isn’t just here to do a job; she’s here to reconcile her own guilt, confront the mistakes she’s made, and learn how to forgive herself.[/p][p][/p][p]For me, Dalia was always our main character of Ambrosia Sky. I knew right from the start that the story of this world would shine if paired with an emotionally complex protagonist, providing an additional layer to the stories of grief and death that players will encounter. Dalia needed to be smart; she’s a scientist, but she’s also not easily grossed out, two strengths that play nicely in contrast to her somewhat emotional immaturity. When things get tough emotionally, Dalia tends to run away. Except this time she can’t. She has to see this through, at first because it’s a job she’s trained to do, but then because she’s invested in trying to save Maeve, and by extension, learning to look at her emotions directly.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]But there’s more to Dalia than just her job. The early process of developing Dalia’s character included stacking the story and game objectives for her with references. The biologist from Annihilation was a huge early inspiration for Dalia, somebody who charges directly into unknown waters with a curiosity that can be dangerous to her. Despite her uneven emotions, Dalia doesn’t reveal them. She keeps her secrets close to her chest, and her feelings even closer.[/p][p][/p][p]The voice acting for Dalia really encompasses this range, this clinical detachment mired by extreme emotional tumultuousness. Writing Dalia was really about tapping into the ways in which we are dishonest with ourselves, and a lot of what I brought to Dalia from myself was my ability to overintellectualize my emotions instead of just feeling them. Dalia is a person who spends a lot of time in her head and, as such, struggles to accept the larger emotions that still manage to dominate her, despite her ability to rationalize them (if she even thinks about them at all).[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]One of the earliest sketches of Dalia.[/p][p][/p][p]Even from our earliest days, Dalia has always been Dalia. There’s parts of her that have shifted and morphed through development, particularly as the plot got solidified, as other characters came into focus, and as the story needs evolved as our game evolved. The core of her has always been there: this clever, emotionally detached woman trying to reconcile her own needs with those of her family and the people she loves.[/p][p][/p][p]As such, I hope players find comfort in Dalia. She’s made mistakes. She’s hurt people. But she’s trying to find a way through those emotions to help the people that she can, and to learn how to forgive herself. What I’ve brought to Dalia, and what I hope others can take from her, is navigating how to be gentle with ourselves while still doing the difficult, necessary work of accepting who we are, flaws and all, in order to show up for ourselves and others.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]If you want to know more about the development of Ambrosia Sky, take a look at our prior dev logs that cover the role of a Scarab, the art & audio direction of the game, a look at the tech & design behind our cleaning mechanics, and an overview of what Ambrosia Sky is.[/p][p][/p][p]You can also download the demo from Steam to step right into Dalia's shoes and see the crisis firsthand. In our next devlog, we’ll begin to talk about the cast of characters that surround and support Dalia on this journey.[/p]

[p][/p][p]In this week’s devlog, we speak to Greg Harrison and Michelle Hwu, the composer and audio director for Ambrosia Sky, respectively. They share insights into using sound & music as worldbuilding, discuss the instruments and methods used in composing tracks for the game, and reveal the first full track for the game (demo players will recognize it!): Gerald’s Last Rites.[/p][p] [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Can you describe how you approached the music for the Cluster’s different generations? [/p][p][/p][p]Michelle: When I first learned where and when our game takes place, I got really curious about how music and art might have been created and preserved in our futuristic, sci-fi world. Kait outlined the three generations of humans that lived on the Cluster, which helped shape my understanding of how music might have evolved over roughly 200 years. People leaving Earth for Saturn would have brought only specific items and materials, which would impact what could be preserved over time. I wanted my early exploration of the music lore to serve as a foundation for our game’s soundtrack.[/p][p][/p][p]From there, I came up with some loose guidelines for each generation and how that would influence the game’s sound. For example, I imagined that when people first arrived on the Cluster, wood was scarce, large instruments were hard to come by, and they had to make do with whatever they could find, such as metal scraps from ships, mycelium, and beast bones. That got me thinking about how we could incorporate a sense of primitive technology and accessible instruments into the game’s music, using items like bones, jaw harps, ocarinas, and conches. I was introduced to Grej’s music, which felt like a perfect match for our world — he’s well-known for blending organic and electronic sounds in a really compelling way, and I knew he would be able to bring a great sound to our game.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]What different types of instruments and sounds did you play with?[/p][p][/p][p]Grej: The Cluster was an invitation to think outside the box and explore what kinds of sounds might have existed and evolved over time in a completely different world. I considered what resources would be available, which instruments might have survived the journey from Earth (and which didn’t), and how those instruments might adapt to new contexts. What if bellows were used as percussive tools instead of for breathing air into a reed instrument? What if bowing a cymbal could transform it into something melodic? What if flutes were resonated by springs? These kinds of questions became the blueprint for the score. My intention was to make the Cluster feel alive — and to do that, I knew I had to build things from scratch.[/p][p][/p][p]I began by exploring “found sounds”: scrap metal, bones, springs, pipes and tubes, cymbals, and various synthetic skins. From there, the experimentation really blossomed as I searched for expressive ways to bring these textures to life. One of the main thematic drones you’ll hear is created by playing a jaw harp through a tube and processing it through layers of granular reverb, resulting in an organic, growling sound that feels unique to this world.[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][p]Can you describe your process for composing the music that plays during Gerald’s death ritual?[/p][p][/p][p]Grej: I really appreciated the team’s approach to death in the game. While much of the score leans into dark, ominous textures, Gerald’s death ritual felt like a space to shift into something gentler, something beautiful.[/p][p][/p][p]In contrast to all the bespoke, clustery instruments I built for the world of The Cluster, I wanted to introduce a sound that felt pure and transcendent. For me, the piano embodies that feeling. It’s an instrument that doesn’t exist on the Cluster — almost a mythical relic, a distant memory from Earth. Using it in Gerald’s and Kai’s rites became a way to musically connect them to their ancestors as they cross into the beyond.[/p][p][/p][p]The piece itself unfolds like an intimate dirge — not heavy or mournful, but quiet, reflective, and reverent. It’s also one of the only moments in the game where vocals appear, adding a human fragility to the farewell.[/p][p][/p][p]How does the music interact with the level design and gameplay experience? How do you account for player action?[/p][p][/p][p]Michelle: Grej and I wanted each track to evolve in its own way as the player moves through different levels in the game. We have several distinct mission types, and each one calls for a different musical vibe. Some needed to feel more exploratory, while others had to align closely with the narrative. Then there are moments where the level ramps up into full-on, fast-paced action. While working with Grej, we ensured that each section of music had sufficient variation based on the player’s choices — specifically, the path they take, the duration of their stay in an area, and their subsequent actions. We were constantly thinking about the mood of each level and what we wanted the player to feel at every stage.[/p][p][/p][p]Sometimes, the music needed to take center stage — like during the death rites — while other times, it’s more of a background groove for tasks like cleaning fungus off a level or just casually exploring for items. The fact that our main character often wanders through abandoned spaces filled with dead bodies significantly shaped the darker undertones that appear in our soundtrack.[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][p]What inspirations did you draw from for the music and sounds of the game?[/p][p]Grej: Michelle gave me a lot of great influences to start with. One of the main themes we focused on was incorporating throat singing and jaw harps — sounds with deep, organic qualities. My goal was to take those traditional elements and push them into really unconventional, unexpected contexts to fit the world of the Cluster.[/p][p][/p][p]Since Michelle and I both have backgrounds in classical and contemporary percussion, we wanted to blend scrap percussion with driving electronic layers. Finding a balance between the raw, natural qualities and the more synthetic, rhythmic elements was key. We aimed to create music that felt fresh, immersive, and approachable, allowing players to emotionally connect with the soundscape while experiencing something new and unique.[/p][p][/p][p]Michelle: Some of my early inspirations came from experimental artists who lean heavily on percussion, like Yosi Horikawa and Steve Reich, along with cinematic soundtracks like Mica Levi’s Under the Skin, Colin Stetson’s Hereditary, and Clint Mansell’s Moon. A big focus for the game’s soundscape was capturing the feeling of being alone in space, while still hinting at the vibrant history that once existed there. The phrase “weird and wonderful” became a guiding idea throughout the process, particularly when illustrating how the fungus took over the Cluster and reshaped the landscape.[/p][p][/p][p]We wanted to create a fresh, unique take on how a sci-fi game can sound, especially since we’re not making a typical space marine-style title. I’ve always loved using “found sounds” — taking whatever materials are around and turning them into organic soundscapes, which is what led me to work with Grej. He explored new ways to play familiar instruments and gave them a fresh twist.[/p][p][/p][p]Do you have a favourite instrument you like to work with, and if it made its way into the game, how?[/p][p][/p][p]Grej: I used a lot of granular synths like the GR-1, Lemondrop, and Omnisphere to turn all these found sounds into playable instruments. One sound I was really excited about was called the “Beast Teeth” — a mix of actual teeth and jawbones (don’t ask) combined with a pitched-down vibraslap. Playing this on a keyboard instrument was incredibly fun![/p][p][/p][p]Michelle: There are a number of standout sounds that Grej designed, but one of my personal favourites is when we hear the DynaCrasher, which appears in some of the later levels. It has a sharp, percussive quality (which we jokingly call the “tsk tsk”) that cuts through the mix with precision, helping to anchor the rhythm during high-intensity sequences. He also created a great sound which we lovingly referred to as the “FZEW FZEW”, which is a combination of analog synth layers with processed metal samples to produce a static-laced, almost electrical texture that gives the soundscape a sense of tension and movement.[/p][p][/p][p]From a team perspective, we were especially excited by the positive reactions to Grej’s use of throat singing sounds. We integrated them across several tracks, using layered harmonic overtones and low-frequency textures to evoke a sense of ritual, which added depth to the game’s darker, more atmospheric moments.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]How do you score a piece of interactive media compared to something more traditional, like film?[/p][p]Grej: This was my first video game I’ve worked on, and I was super intrigued by how an interactive medium can really influence the compositional process.[/p][p][/p][p]I began to notice parallels with contemporary music styles, particularly in the works of John Cage. Cage’s use of “chance” in many of his later compositions inspired me to approach the score as a living, evolving system rather than a fixed piece. This way, the music could feel alive and responsive, reacting dynamically to the player’s choices and progress throughout the game.[/p][p][/p][p]Michelle: One of the most interesting parts of collaborating with Grej was learning to communicate in different ways–sometimes through more traditional, linear scoring approaches, and then translating that into something that works for interactive media. His fresh approach to composition initially pushed the limits of my Wwise implementation skills, but once we figured it out, it was incredibly rewarding. We ultimately found some unconventional ways to manipulate Wwise to achieve the desired results, which is always a fun challenge. The outcome is a set of music transitions that feel much more organic and seamless as players move through the levels.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Gregory Harrison, also known as Grej is a dynamic and multi-faceted musician, composer and producer based in Toronto. Greg’s an East Coast Music Award winner and Dora-nominated composer, with over 50 composition and recording credits spanning concert music, film, and interactive media. His commissioned works include projects for Toronto Dance Theatre, ProArté Danza, Popular Demand Pictures, and Architek Percussion. He has toured internationally with artists such as Jeremy Dutcher, Cirque du Soleil, and The Cybertronic Spree, performing at venues including Massey Hall, NPR’s Tiny Desk, the JUNOs, and The Kennedy Center. Greg’s work explores the intersection of acoustic performance and live electronics through his innovative use of music technology.[/p][p][/p][p]Michelle Hwu is the Audio Director at Soft Rains, with over a decade of experience in both games and post-production for film and TV. Her work in games includes audio roles at Ubisoft Toronto, Beans, and Drag Her!. Originally trained in Percussion Performance at the University of Toronto, Michelle has performed with ensembles such as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, and the Esprit Orchestra. In post-production, her credits include projects featured at TIFF, Sundance, and the Tribeca Film Festival, along with work for CBC, NBC, and Shudder. Most recently, Michelle was recently nominated for a Canadian Screen Award in Sound Editing for the film In A Violent Nature.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]To stay up to date on Ambrosia Sky and to support our team, please wishlist the game on Steam, join our community Discord, and follow us on social media.

📸 by Gabriel Packer[/p]

[p][/p][p][/p][p]Adam Volker has worked in games and animation for 13 years. He worked briefly in AAA games at BioWare and Midway as a concept artist. Then, art directed the short film The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore, which won an Academy Award in 2012. He was nominated for an Emmy in 2018 for Manifest 99, a narrative VR experience. Now he works at Soft Rains creating narrative and mechanically peculiar games while trying to make them as pretty as possible.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Ambrosia Sky is set on colonies built on the back of asteroids nestled in the rings of Saturn. It’s about Dalia, a Scarab. Familiar with death, a scientist enlisted to cure humanity’s mortality on her return journey home. Our Narrative Director, Kait Tremblay, had built this incredible world in their head. I felt like my job was to distill the parts that needed to shine for the player and make them real.[/p][p]When players pick up the controller to play what you’ve made, you have an opportunity to spark their imagination, to show them a world they haven’t thought of, and if you’re lucky, inspire them to make something and pay it forward. Good art is cumulative.[/p][p][/p][p]I strive to create a distinctive style for each project. There are centuries of brilliant 2D art to be found. So many styles to explore that artists before me have expressed in paint (digital or otherwise). What haven’t I tried to translate into 3D yet? Just as importantly, what’s cool looking? What sounds fun to try!? I pick one or two strong references for myself and the 2D team to dissect, understand, and internalize. Then we “method act” our paintings, using the tools taught to us by other painters and render objects from our unique world with those rules. The painting below is me trying to paint the large graphic shapes from our references with details inside, and design a building unique to our colony.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]You can try, but you can’t erase your own way of painting; it’s a beautiful thing about creating anything. Everyone has a style, whether they paint or not. Even as our concept team tries to emulate the style of the specific references I’ve chosen, we trust the process to produce something wholly unique. It’s a fun exercise to start each project by combining simple, strong references and my own precious biases. (haha)[/p][p]To get us started and to help direct the team towards what I’m aiming for, I made this spectrum and placed our goal on it. The two axes, one for the design of objects and the other for the final rendering style, helped us define what we wanted the word stylized to mean.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]It’s a pet peeve of mine the way our industry uses the word “stylized” to describe non-realistic visuals. For our Ambrosia Sky, we wrote our own definition. There is so much media out there that is really good, and if you have the appetite, even more after that. It’s 2025 now. We drink from a visual firehose. It means the chance to surprise people when you actually get their attention is special. We only get so many at bat.[/p][p][/p][p]I was looking for painterly detail, rendered inside graphic forms. A stylized world where colour choices weren’t literal, and subverted expectations of what outer space might look like. I feel like every year, our photographs of space bring back new colours, new textures that were there and we didn’t see before. It’s still such a big mystery what’s out there. We had to try to represent visually more than we know now. For instance, we designed our airlock door to spin as a sphere instead of opening on a hinge. Why not?![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Our game features vast, desolate spaces filled with fungus. Part of our game involved giant, dead space creatures so that we could dip our toes into the realm of fantasy. But at the end of the day, to hold the gravity of our story that is about death and life’s finality, the game needed to be credible. The world needed to make sense and had to have a rich amount of detail. Even if it was stylized. Shared language is crucial when trying to establish a unique style for a game. Despite our sophistication in design, not everyone thinks of the same references in the same way.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The visual language of any project should be built alongside the story of the world, reinforce the gameplay and highlight the themes of the idea. Production design involves translating a theme into a visual language, being specific about details, and adhering to a concept throughout the entire production. It’s a question and answer. What designs support Dalia’s journey? How do we make a maximalist game about fungus legible?[/p][p][/p][p]Ysabel painted this; she is one of the most talented painters I’ve worked with. She put mood, design, organized colour, stylized brushstrokes AND story all into this image. This was a milestone painting for articulating the game. When she painted this, we hadn’t started building out our 3D kit for the game yet. This piece was a north star then, and still is one I return to, reminding me how the game should feel.[/p][p][/p][p]Concept art is for iterating, it’s for exploring. A good piece of art inspires the team’s imagination to create the game depicted in the picture, but concept art is a promise. After a few months of painting the building blocks, it was time to translate it into engine. We had some influences, a clear distinction of what we were after, and a huge stockpile of lore, character writing, and themes to draw from. Now we had to climb the mountain.[/p][p][/p][p]We filled in the corners of the world with paintings. Built a design language for the technology, and layered in history for different ages of architecture. Another huge challenge of the project was the life form Dalia encounters when she finally lands on the Cluster. The exo fungus.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Malicious space fungus that has overgrown the living spaces, airlocks, and facilities of her hometown. This was not only a set piece of our gross, dead, derelict world, but also the core of the gameplay. To uncover the truth about what happened to her friends and loved ones, Dalia must face a mutating, growing enemy by cleaning it away.[/p][p][/p][p]Each fungus has its own gameplay parameters, behaviour and interaction with the world. As Dalia learns what it does, we as players do too. It needed to be awful and beautiful. Gross and alluring.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]We settled on high visual density, but not high detail. Graphic shapes everywhere, simple colours. Players needed to walk into a busy room, find what they were looking for immediately, assess the danger level in a room quickly and plan their route around it. With everything glowing, growing, and fighting for your attention, we chose to make each fungus’s shape design unique, individualize the colours between them, and keep the silhouettes strong so players wouldn’t be overwhelmed by what they saw.[/p][p][/p][p]The final challenge was turning the art we’d painted into an explorable 3D space. The design of the forms was straightforward. Build something big and flat to grow fungus on top of, easy. Making it feel painterly was harder. It took us several iterations and a lot of open-minded experimentation, but we got there. I think the game looks beautiful.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Please wishlist the game on Steam, join our community Discord, follow us on social media, and, of course, download the demo to get your first hands-on experience with Ambrosia Sky.[/p]

Summer Game Fest 2025 was packed with eye-catching reveals, yet it was a small indie title from Canadian developers that stood out as one of the most unique and haunting. Ambrosia Sky, a first-person sci-fi adventure from Toronto’s own Soft Rains, isn’t your typical shooter or puzzle game. Instead, it weaves together themes of loss, memory and humanity’s struggle with mortality—all set within a world that feels equal parts horror and Power-Wash Simulator, yet somehow delivers an experience that’s both ethereal and alive.

In Ambrosia Sky, you play as Dalia, a cleanup specialist deployed to the moons of Saturn after the fungus people were cultivating turned deadly. It’s your job to visit derelict spaceships and planetary outposts to tidy up the disasters left behind by the mysterious Ambrosia project. But this is no ordinary janitorial assignment—Dalia is also somewhat magical, tasked with collecting the final words of the dead and helping the project uncover the secrets of death... Read more

[p][/p][p][/p][p]At Soft Rains, world-building is at the heart of our creative process. This isn’t just about how we write; it unifies everything we do, from art direction to audio to game design. And if worldbuilding is the centre of our process, the player character is at the centre of our worldbuilding. Dalia, the protagonist of Ambrosia Sky, is a scientist first and foremost, so we’ve designed the ways she interacts with the environment to represent this. Beyond that, Dalia knows this place: she was born here, long before the crisis that prompts the actions of the game.[/p][p][/p][p]The core of Ambrosia Sky’s gameplay revolves around cleaning up after the alien contamination that has decimated the Cluster (the agricultural colony in the rings of Saturn in which our game takes place), resulting in mass death and a lethally overgrown environment. The cleaning gameplay isn’t the only central game system in Ambrosia Sky. Still, it is one of our biggest, so we wanted to spend some time talking about the different ideas that comprise our main gameplay verb: cleaning with a chemical spray and the alien contamination that you are tasked with cleaning up.[/p][p][/p][p]We’ve already seen people describe Ambrosia Sky’s core gameplay as a combination of PowerWash Simulator’s cleaning and Metroid Prime’s atmospheric exploration. You’re here to find the victims of the crisis and clean up the deadly fungus that killed them. But the alien fungus of Ambrosia Sky doesn’t want to be cleaned. It can hurt the player by shocking or burning them. It can also move, chase, and impede you through the environment. To help our fungus blur that line between enemy and environment, we’ve invented a voxel-like system where cleaning can be tactile, allowing you to carve a path through masses of fungus, but we’ll get to that in a minute.[/p][p][/p][p]First, let’s meet the alien contamination that has overrun the Cluster.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Meet the Alien Contamination[/h3][p][/p][p]The alien fungus is the naturally occurring flora of our setting, The Cluster. Humans discovered it here roughly 90 years before the events of Ambrosia Sky. In classic human fashion, we colonized the Cluster, exploiting the local ecosystem, and thought of ourselves as its masters.[/p][p][/p][p]But this ecosystem is unstable. Players will also experience this instability in-game (the first mission, as seen in our demo, is a great example!). As players collect organic samples for study, the act of extraction will cause a cascading response from the environment itself, triggering fungal growths that are, quite frankly, a bit furious at you for disturbing their ecosystem.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Our alien fungus is both environment and enemy, but it’s also a deeply embedded part of our resource system and upgrade paths, as well. Internally, we’ve used the phrase “farm-to-table fungus”, referring to a type of fungus that exhibits specific behavioural patterns in the environment and can also be harvested to create specialized sprays (among other upgrades) based on those environmental behaviours.[/p][p][/p][p]To support this, our fungus colonies are composed of two sections: the main roots/stalk of the fungi, which comprise the majority of a colony, and the “fruit”. For the amateur mycologists among you, we use the term fruit here in the same way scientists distinguish a mushroom fruit from hyphae (or roots) of a mycorrhizal network.[/p][p][/p][p]For example, with our electric fungus, energized roots sprawl across walls and deal damage to unwary players. Along these roots, players will occasionally see stalks ending in crystalline fruit, which emit a dangerous area-of-effect.[/p][p][/p][p]Using either the sprayer or the tether, players can disconnect the fruit from the roots, neutralizing the threat it presents. This allows the fruit to be harvested and then used to upgrade your chemical sprayer. The most exciting upgrade enables Dalia to create an electric spray that can be used to create electric conduits and surfaces to conduct electricity to unpowered doors and similar devices.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]An exploder fungus, on the other hand, well, explodes.[/p][p][/p][p]Acting like an abominable cross between a puffball mushroom and a proximity mine, exploder fungi expand the closer you get, eventually bursting into flame to protect itself. Harvesting exploder fungus fruit is a bit more volatile (thanks to its explosive nature), but becomes easier in zero-g, when the fruit floats more delicately in the air, rather than tumbling down and exploding upon impact. Like with the electric, players harvest exploder fruit by severing the fruit from its base, but with exploder, this is done by carving through the thick roots. You can harvest exploder fungus’s fruit to craft flammable sprays, which can kill fungus or spread fire to nearby flammable objects. Or you can set off a chain reaction of explosive fruit, letting the resulting fire burn away the large fungus colony that remains.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Jules Glegg (Technology Director) explains that, [/p]

[p]… there are the simulation elements. We created a custom simulation system just for Ambrosia Sky, geared specifically to introduce the kind of hazards that matter in space — like fire — and to let Dalia use her creativity and know-how to manipulate those hazards in her favor. Ambrosia Sky’s simulation lets fungus interact very directly with the environment, for example by overloading an electric circuit that controls the exit door. It also gives clever players more ways to clean, like toppling a massive spire of electric fungus just by knocking its base out from under it.[/p]

[p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][p]This design approach gives us a lot of flexibility, allowing us to fill spaces with the alien fungus in interesting ways, creating traps and hazards that players have to contend with, and creating an interesting risk/reward of whether to carefully prune the fungus to harvest the fruit, or to clean the whole thing up to make progression easier. Below is a concept exploring the different layouts an exploder fungus could take to operate as an environmental threat.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Jules goes on to say, [/p]

[p]Fungus is so fun to work on. It’s all familiar game development problems, in a totally wild new combination that throws out a lot of the standard solutions. First, there’s the problem of how to let a level designer build a colony, shape it to their liking, and trigger when it should grow. For this we use Houdini (a workhorse application for visual effects artists) and a cool example of nature-inspired math called the Space Colonization Algorithm. The resulting tool lets a level designer drop fungus into a level, set up areas for it to avoid, mark spots where they’d like a fruit to spawn, and then grow the colony right towards your face as you round a dark corner.[/p]

[p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Making Cleaning Satisfying[/h3][p][/p][p]In addition to making the fungus feel alive, compelling, and threatening, we also wanted to make cleaning it up feel incredibly satisfying. To clean up the fungus, Dalia is equipped with a chemical sprayer. It’s her primary tool, and its base spray dissolves organic material on contact.[/p][p][/p][p]Designing Dalia’s sprayer, both the look and the feel of it, was a lot of fun. We went through a variety of designs, some of which felt more like a pistol, and others that, quite frankly, felt more like my Dyson vacuum cleaner. With these explorations, we ended up somewhere pleasantly in the middle: a tool that feels powerful and effective, but is obviously designed for cleaning and restoration rather than combat (although it is helpful in combat, especially when your enemies are furiously sentient alien fungus).[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The interaction between the sprayer and the fungus is key to making cleaning feel so good. The electric fungus is super brittle and shatters pleasantly on impact. But we wanted our exploder fungus, a much chunkier fungus, to feel different when it is being cleaned. We wanted the ability to carve out chunks of it, to be able to burrow through it even. So cue: Quantized Impact Field, our unique destruction tech. To explain Quantized Impact Field, or “QIF”, here’s Jules: [/p][p][/p]

[p]“Quantized Impact Field! QIF (pronounced “kiff”) is the tech that lets you clean fungus in precise chunks or even tunnel through large colonies. Lots of games have this kind of “volumetric” destruction, but we really wanted to find a way of doing it that avoids the usual tell-tale blockiness and supports Ambrosia Sky’s very hand-made, stylized art direction.”[/p]

[p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Jules goes on: [/p]

[p]“To give a little more detail — as you clean, QIF records every sprayer hit into a grid of cubes called voxels. That data is then used to change the physical collision of the fungus, so you can walk through the cool tunnel you just made, and also sent over to your graphics card where we use it to change the appearance of the fungus — melting it, crumbling it away, whatever the artists want it to do.”[/p]

[p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][p]In our next Ambrosia Sky developer log, we’ll take a look at the art direction and the decisions that went into giving Ambrosia Sky its distinct visual identity.[/p][p][/p][p]Jules Glegg is Soft Rains’ Technology Director, where she spends most of her time guiding the development of gameplay systems and wrenching on simulation code. Previously, Jules worked on League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra and VALORANT as a Principal Engineer at Riot Games. She is a co-founder of Trans Game Dev.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Please wishlist the game on Steam, join our community Discord, follow us on social media, and, of course, download the demo to get your first hands-on experience with Ambrosia Sky.[/p]