Ember Lab is very excited to share our first game with the world next week. In the game, you play as Kena, a young Spirit Guide who travels to an abandoned village in search of a sacred mountain shrine, and who must help the wandering spirits trapped there.
Kena’s original character designs were created by Wanchana “Vic” Intrasombat. He was a close collaborator on our commercial projects in the past, but this time he had a blank canvas and we can see so much of his charming and unique view of the world in all of the character designs.
The first sketches portrayed a very young girl. As the mechanics and story evolved, we realized she needed to be very skilled, and that her work as a Spirit Guide would require her to draw on more life experience when helping the other characters in the story. She gradually became older and more knowledgeable.
Kena was realized in 3D for the first time by Rodrigo Gonçalves. He built the prototype model and later continued to refine and explore real-time techniques for various details like her hair. We also collaborated with Carlos Ortega, who many revere for his beautifully clean 3D character work.
We iterated quite a bit over the course of the project, adding finer textures and exploring alpha card techniques that we had seen in other incredible games before us. For the hair, we eventually found a blend between solid geometry, which could give very clear shapes and catch light nicely, and alpha planes to show the detail of individual hair strands providing some more variation and imperfection. Similar attention would be given to the clothing, adding different fabric patterns and even some worn edges.
We love details like this, and it is something we try to do in all aspects of the game. The wear on her clothing communicates some experience and adventure. The beautiful staff she carries and various ornate decorations on her clothing aren’t loud, but reflect a reverence for tradition and a devotion to a greater purpose.
She is fully brought to life in animation, where much of her personality is conveyed through the way she moves and acts. The scope of the game and story was much larger than our past projects. This presented an exciting challenge in creating expressions with more emotional range and depth, and that had the right warmth and compassion for our hero. With many animations across the game, we created a library of expressions and other details like hand and hair poses. This provided a fast way to refine and unify animations and ensure that Kena always felt inhabited by the same soul from beginning to end.
A biome full of perilous hills to skate down.
On PS5, you’ll be able to appreciate all the epic and super wacky level details in stunning 4K. And when you’re absolutely crushing a level, chaining trick after trick at the highest possible speed down the biggest possible hill? No stress, because you’ll be doing it at 120 FPS (4K and 120fps with compatible devices).
Welcome to Burntrock
Burntrock is a new biome we wanted to reveal today and just one of five distinct biomes that make up Radlandia. It’s a desertscape full of camping cactus-folk, giant ancient fossils, and the legendary Burntrock Fest. Take a closer look at the locale below:
Cruise or crumble.
Well placed landings are key in Burnt Rock.
Even though it’s a desert, it’s not barren but brimming with character, and that was something that felt really important to us when we were developing our game – we want it to be a living, breathing world for players to explore. The levels in Burntrock are designed to teach you new techniques, like grabs, whilst simultaneously providing you a chance to polish up the skills you’ve developed through the game so far. And that means… well, it means you’re going to slam!
But the work that the art and design teams have put into Burntrock, makes that its own kind of