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Firewatch: a forest built by a small team
Know first: Open-world design: regions and landmarks
This breakdown takes apart the forest of Firewatch (2016), a story game about a fire lookout in the Wyoming wilderness, made by the small studio Campo Santo. Two things make it worth studying. A team of about a dozen people, with three artists, built a big stylized forest that looks like a poster come to life. And that forest leads the player without arrows or a map on the screen. The sources are the artist Jane Ng’s answers on the studio blog in 2014 and reports of her talks at GDC in 2015 and 2016. To them we add a talk by the designer Nels Anderson and an interview with Sean Vanaman, one of the game’s two directors.
The whole picture
| Part | The problem | The answer |
|---|---|---|
| A poster in 3D | The goal was a flat, bold poster; a 3D forest is full of fine detail | Far things turn into flat colors: fog from a ramp of colors, simple far trees and mountains |
| Color from light | Many times of day, few artists | Gray rocks; color from the sky, fog and color grading, changed together; a color script |
| Few pieces, many places | Three artists for a whole forest | 23 trees placed about 4,600 times, rocks reused in new combinations, bought tools |
| A forest that leads | Corridors feel fake, and being lost in a game is boring | Space carved from the land with room before the walls, a paper map, detail where it matters |
| The way of working | A stylized look can’t be judged on paper | Gray draft, paintover, art, playthrough, three to six rounds for each place |
Behind the first three parts stands Ng’s advice from her 2015 talk: “Embrace your limitations.” The look, the light and the reuse of pieces are what a small team could afford, turned into a style.