MoonstoneIsland Artbook 8
MoonstoneIsland Artbook 8
MoonstoneIsland Artbook 8
rawfury.com
Table of Contents
4 Introduction
5 Characters
28 Spirits
39 Environments
61 Concept Art
71 Key Art
79 Acknowledgements
When I speak about Moonstone Island, I typically mention the genres it could be slow, calm, and gentle. As a player, it humbled me, as
gets assigned or the mechanics it contains, but what really built the core time moved forward regardless of my will, day turning to night, and
of the game are the feelings and experiences I had growing up on the Summer turning to Fall. It introduced me to the idea that you could
west coast of Canada. have real feelings for characters in a game. I gave them gifts, we
celebrated special occasions, and I even got to have my first ever
I was lucky enough to spend most of my childhood on Vancouver Island girlfriend. (It counts!)
in a little oceanside town. My summers were spent skimboarding, biking,
swimming, sailing, skateboarding, wakeboarding, kayaking, camping, and
going on little adventures with my friends anywhere we could. But humid So, Moonstone Island is a love letter to all of this – my adventures
winds caused by the warm oceanic currents cool down in the mountains under a big blue sky on a hot sandy beach, and my adventures un-
on the island, leading to it being one of the wettest non-tropical areas in der a rain-soaked roof on a tiny fuzzy screen. I hope that you will
the world. So, when Fall would bring the endless rain, I turned to video feel this when you play the game, and that you will come away with
games for my adventures. tales of your own adventures on Moonstone Island.
Pokémon was the first game I escaped to. The story, the music, the
sound, the characters, the creatures, and the massive world crammed Sandy Spink
into those 11MB had a profound impact on me. Having not yet played a Creator of Moonstone Island
Zelda game, it was the first open-world game I had experienced, and it
really did feel as though I could go anywhere and do anything. I even
remember feeling a sense of self-expression through the creatures I
chose to collect and raise, which was something that was important to
me as a child.
My next love was Harvest Moon 64. I’m not sure what I expected when
I booted this game up at seven years old, but I doubt I thought it would
affect me as much as it has. Harvest Moon showed me that games
Chapter Title
Characters
Hello, dear reader. Cleo here – the historian of Moonstone Island. I’ve long been
involved with chronicling the history of our island, but I have neglected to include
its current state, and its present inhabitants. So, I sat down with my friends,
colleagues, and willing subjects to ask them a little more about themselves. May
the following interviews serve as the history of Moonstone Island in years to come!
Cleo
Characters 7
Not much.
Being buff, being goofy, and flirting with anything that moves.
If I’m not in my forge, then, um... the tavern, I guess. I’m usually
there, bothering Ossono. LOL. [editor’s note: Ferra actually said
“lol” here.]
Characters 10
Characters 11
Plants.
...Any more information than that? This is for the Gaiana (she/they)
historical records, you know.
...
Oh, yes! Most people don’t realise how much Gaiana and I do for
the flora here on Moonstone Island. Perhaps you’d be interested in
discussing it some time?
Characters 14
Hello, Ossono!
Oh, well... I run the Tavern. Brew beer and wine. Serve coffee and
food. Try to keep things relatively chill on Friday nights when the
whole town descends here...
Hello, Paolo!
Paolo (they/them)
Which brings me nicely to my first question:
What do you do?
Wha? We’ve met before, haven’t we? I’m Quill... did you forget? Quill (he/him)
I like painting! And just, like, hanging out. I dunno! Moonstone Island
has a lot of stuff to do and I like most of it.
You’re welcome!
Characters 21
Hey, Rowan!
Oh, um... I feel like I should have prepared some answers... What
did everyone else say?
Um...
...Rowan?
Hello, Tobin!
Alright, b’y?
Tobin (he/him)
Oh! This old thing. Aye, I got it from me parents, an’ their parents,
and so on, goin’ all the way back ta the old world below. It’s been
long forgotten where the place was, exactly, but the name passed
down is New-Found Land. I always thought that sounded right cool!
I’s the b’y who catches the fish. A Fisherman by trade an’ by choice.
Characters 24
Greetings, Zed.
Hi, Cleo! Have you come to talk shop with me? I thought maybe you
didn’t get my invite, since I sent it last week, but maybe Ossono
Zed (he/him) just took a while to get it to you...
Let me guess: You don’t want to discuss the migration habits of Ice
Spirits with your favourite Scientist?
To you, maybe! I just wish I had someone to talk about this stuff
with. Ah well. Maybe I should ask the Alchemist. I bet they’d be more
willing to chat about the, ahem, boring stuff.
Characters 26
Sorry...
Waldo (he/him)
[Editor's note: I have included Waldo, the Magic Man, here as a beloved and former member
of Moonstone Island's inhabitants, but he has long been missing from the island. The common
belief is that he fled after trying (and failing) to seal one of the dangerous rifts in the sky,
which seemed to cause him great mental distress. He has not been seen since, but rumour has
it that he lives on the outer islands, somewhere... I just hope he's okay.]
Chapter Title
Spirits
Hi! Zed here! Since Cleo got to do a bunch of interviews for her History of
Moonstone Island, I offered to add some information about Spirits. That's
my specialty, after all!
Zed
Spirits 30
Here we see an ancient document with some of the first Spirit sketches. This document is
incredibly valuable, because it shows how little some Spirits have evolved since the sketch was
made - like Octopup in the top left corner, for example - but it also shows us some long-extinct
Spirits that have not been spotted in living memory. The artist's sketch of a "stinky sock puppet"
for example - scholars have no idea if this was ever a Spirit that existed, or some kind of joke
that the artist was making! I quite like the stinky sock puppet, though.
Spirits 31
Here we have even more examples of old biological illustrations of ancient island fauna. This
document displays many types of Spirit: Fire, Electric, Poison, Water, Ice, Earth, Shadow, and
Psychic, only one of which - Shadow - is a type not recognised today. Does this mean that once,
Shadow creatures roamed the islands? Since the Rift was opened, we have seen Dark Spirits
emerge into the world... were these once known as Shadow Spirits?
It is fascinating to see, once more, that many of these Spirits still exist today, but I personally
mourn the loss of some of these creatures, lost to extinction over time. Who is this shoe-like
creature of the Earth type? Was it some kind of symbiotic friend of the stinky sock puppet? We
shall never know. This document does prove one thing, though: Fishbo has existed for a long, long
time. Perhaps since the beginning
Spirits 32
Spirits 33
Spirits 34
This pair of documents is one of my favourites! Unlike the ancient ones we already
discussed, these sketches are more recent, and show a greater level of artistic
detail - that is, they show the Spirits they depict in different forms. Perhaps, once,
these creatures looked different in subtle ways - some having rounded bodies,
others having long tongues - until centuries of breeding and change made them all
look the same. However, this is just a theory. It is just as likely that the artist in
question was having some fun designing alternate looks for the Spirits they saw...
Spirits 35
Spirits 36
Here, we see some very familiar Spirits, but there is an important thing
to note: None of them yet have names. Ribbite is simply "frog"; Capacibee
is "bee"; and the fearsome Ankylo is simply "lizard". Could these be their
original names? Better yet, are they the names of the ancestral beasts
from which they are descended? This gives us great insight into the
creatures of the old world...
Spirits 37
Spirits 38
Chapter Title
Environments
We started by thinking we could procedurally generate all islands but that produced
islands that were sort of bland and aimless so instead I decided I would make each
island by hand so I could ensure that they all had their own unique look and feel as
well as a sort of "path" that the player would have to follow to reach possible points
of interest.
Sandy
Environments 41
The world generation runs when a new game is created. It loads islands in from the island
library in concentric rings then, based on which ring the island is in, the system assigns each
island a biome which gives it a different tilemap, places different environmental features and
allows it to spawn Spirits that would only appear in that biome. Once the biomes have been
assigned we place a specific number of what we call “points of interest” around the world.
These are things like dungeons, shrines, warpstones, and healing pools all of which help you
explore and make your party of Spirits stronger.
Sandy
Environments 42
Environments 55
Environments 56
Environments 57
Environments 58
Environments 59
Environments 60
Interest Points
Chapter
ConceptTitle
Art
Concept Art 62
Main Character
Concept Art 63
Plants
The glider has gone through many iterations since the
beginning of the game. Nausicaä's glider from the Ghibli film
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) served as our
main point of inspiration.
Sandy
Card UI
We were constantly fiddling with the UI. There are so many actions the player can
perform inside and outside of combat that it was a constant balancing act of showing
enough information for the player to do what they wanted to, but not showing too
much information and overwhelming them.
Sandy
Concept Art 65
Concept Art 66
Concept Art 67
Concept Art 68
Concept Art 69
Spirits in House
Chapter Title
Key Art
Key Art 72
Key art is always difficult but JMW has such a strong style that
we went to them first to help us establish a tone. The piece they
did really encapsulated the "floating on a summer breeze" feeling
we're always going for and helped draw people into the game.
After that, we started working with Mosqi who paints his pieces by
hand using watercolor. We loved the retro-rpg feel it had, evoking
the era of many of the games that influenced Moonstone Island.
Sandy
Key Art 73
Key Art 74
Key Art 75
Acknowledgements
Illustrations, designs, and sketches done by Sandy Spink unless otherwise stated