Looking at the environment design for Newt!

From the very beginning of Newt! we took lots of inspiration from various ancient civilizations, mainly ones from South America, for the environment and ancient ruins. While we took inspiration from these civilizations, we took care to make our game take place in a fictional world and civilization to avoid misrepresenting any real-world cultures.

When choosing the physical location of our adventure our team had many ideas, ranging from tropical rainforests to waterfall basins. In the end, we decided the adventure would take place underground within an ancient city. We made this choice because it allowed us to allude to the location of a rainforest above, without having to fully create a 3D forest to traverse as the player.

“Waterfall” Concept art by Harrison Kelly

After choosing the underground location, lots of ideation came and went about what the ruins should look like. The team liked some of the earlier concepts of jungle and waterfalls so much, those ideas worked their way into the final design of the game. The second area specifically is an overgrown city, filled with trees and flooded with waterfalls cascading from the ceiling.

“Overgrown Ruins” Concept art by Jon Gilleland

The final design was something that happened slowly with lots of ideation and hard work. The environment of each level was built upon and improved with each meeting and build of the game. In the end, we were able to create something that incorporated all our ideas and meshed them together into something beautiful.

In-game image from beta build

In-game image from alpha build

Designing a world is difficult, but we at Newt! hope you enjoy the one we created for you.

Jon Gilleland

Environment Art Lead