Last month I talked about the challenges and quirks of designing a paper Earth for Book of Aliens. If you missed it, you can find it [url=https://steamcommunity.com/games/1196230/announcements/detail/5677345196481560304]here[/url]. Today I can show you the final concept! We’re quite happy with the result. Witnessing and coordinating a response to an alien invasion from a global perspective is at the center of the experience we wish to create in the Book of Aliens. We feel that having a good view of Earth is crucial to it and the approach you can see below captures well both the paper nature of the planet and the purpose of being a readable strategic view. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36304269/2560c5db4061dbc62f2977666e384b0f3ae44137.jpg[/img] Unfortunately, I also have some bad news :( The lead art designer for Book of Aliens, who also designed the screen above, was recently diagnosed with Covid. We hope he recovers soon, but since Book of Aliens has already been developed with a skeletal crew, there will be some impact on our timelines and sadly not in a good way. Meanwhile, in the design department, steady progress is being made. The thing with written design is that it’s not as impressive as images and not fit for posts like this one. You’ll have to take our word for it but pages after pages are being filled with quality ideas. One of the most novel things we introduced to our process is cross-team reviews. Designers working on other projects read Book of Aliens documentation. Each one of them wrote a lengthy analysis of how it could better recapture the soul of the genre. Currently, we’re brainstorming solutions to questions and issues raised for the current draft of the design. A time-consuming process but already we can see how it’s benefitting the final quality of the game. I was hoping we could have a bigger reveal of the current state of the game this year, but once again our plans got delayed. I truly hope that 2022 goes better for us in terms of development speed, but only time will tell if the initiatives and time investments we made this year will start paying off. Take care and stay safe! Maciek