Connecting Art With Lore and Game Mechanics

By Alvaro Ribeiro, Art Director

Hello, guys, Alvaro here! I’m Loot’s co-founder and Art Director for Malediction, and I’m going to tell you about how we created astonishing art for Loot’s new game. So if you like the art we make, this reading is for you.

Biggest Influences

I’ve always loved Magic: The Gathering, since I was a kid. I was fascinated by the art style, how each card had a bit of lore in it, and how there was a complex and big world behind it all. Of course, a lot of board games and videogames influenced me too, especially games like Elden Ring, and the “souls-like”series, which have this quite gritty, dark fantasy vibe.

As you may have imagined by now, this is what I had in mind when we started to develop Malediction.

Malediction’s Universe

Loot Studios wanted its own ecosystem to play with, so we decided to invest in an original IP that we could call our own. With that, we felt more creative liberty right from the start. We could let ideas flow without worrying about copyrighted materials, and we could think about turning them into new, exciting products in the future.

We wanted the cards and the characters of the game to have a deep personality and a rich lore. We wanted them to feel and look connected to the world and the gameplay. So, early in development, we decided that these cards and characters had to be visually stunning, but also have a bit of their goals, beliefs, and personalities represented in the art.

Artistic Balance

It was a challenge to create everything from scratch, and that’s because we find balancing art and lore quite difficult. The art team wants freedom to go wild and sketch visually appealing characters, and the writing team wants freedom to create intricate lore and backstories with the proper foundations.

We often think about which should come first, and we end up either switching them from time to time or trying to make them simultaneously. That always requires some back-and-forth, and many revisions.

Concept art by Maracuja Studio, 3D sculpture by Rafael Ussuy

Development Process

The art and the lore are deeply connected with Malediction’ game mechanics. We had more flexibility working with the lore than other aspects of the game. Because of that, we tend to create art and gameplay first and insert the lore later, or whenever possible.

Usually, this is how the process goes: we start with the game design and gameplay mechanics, and then we give it a basic first pass of lore. After that, we create some sketches and have some back-and-forth work done between the lore and the art teams. Things can get a bit chaotic sometimes, then we have to stop production, review the process, and adapt the lore to it. But generally speaking, our art team is always very creative and finds great solutions for every challenge.

Our process to create Loot’s monthly bundles is the same. There’s an exchange between teams, each with different expertise in their field, and we manage to harmonize all that creative chaos into a single and badass product.

Working with Tracy Hickman

We already had some ideas of what we wanted when we got Tracy on board. He knows how to handle this genre, and in fact, that’s what motivated him to collaborate with us. We defined a few things with him right from the start, like general settings and factions. We had this broad idea of a dark fantasy game with a somber vibe, and we had a few mechanics done by that time too. So, Tracy got what we already had, didn’t change the essence of the game, and improved everything.

Sometimes, Tracy would give us an idea and we would illustrate it. Sometimes, he saw an illustration and wrote the lore behind it. Like I said before, that’s a natural process for our team, and we like to let the creativity flow. For example, Tracy would write an idea, I would take it to the art team, and they’d create something based on that. Then, I would get back to Tracy and he would change a few things on the lore, add some others, and so on.

Things like writing about a specific faction having 7 rites, and then we would incorporate that in the illustrations. Maybe 7 candles or 7 spikes, in the characters or in the scenery. It had to be “7 somethings” somewhere, and it had to fit the theme.

Tracy also incorporates the art we create when writing the lore, and we’re still trying to fine-tune this process. We discuss a lot about what should happen, how a character should be, and worldbuilding stuff. At the end of the day, collaborating with him made the game better in all aspects. Way better than if we had tried to make everything on our own. That’s why we’re so excited to share the game with you as soon as possible.

Illustration by Ioannis Fiore

Future Expansions

During the creation process, we had a lot of great ideas, but not all of them could fit in the first edition of our game. Thankfully, Malediction is an expandable game! So rest assured, ‘cause these amazing concepts we created will be used in future expansions and add-on contents.

And more than that, Maledictionis a type of game that will attract more and more famous artists over time. So we expect our already amazing art to reach an outstanding level.

Art Style & Malediction’ Identity

Our art style follows the game’s theme, so you can expect a dark fantasy, gritty world.

We wanted to find harmony between creation and desolation, somber and beauty. We like to think that horror needs a bit of balance with something else in order to keep being so, well, terrifying! For Malediction, we decided that beauty would be our second muse to achieve an interesting contrast.

And we work so hard everyday because we want the game to be recognizable by its art. We want to be remarkable for our fantasy elements with an original style, and establish an identity that differs from other existing games.

After all, people have expectations, and decades of geek content telling them that a paladin is a good guy inside a huge armor. But what if he was a demon or not that good? We want to fulfill those expectations but at the same time bring something new to the table. You could say that we’re still playing safe, and I won’t disagree. But we’ve taken that challenge as our mission, and we’ll bring that new creative identity to the product.

Our Expectations

We hope that people love this world as much as we do. We really want to break some stereotypes with this game and make you feel like you’re wearing the character’s shoes while playing with them. They have unique motivations and goals. Some are clearly more heroic than others, and some tend to flirt with the dark side. Either way, there’s no “right side”, only “your side” in Malediction.