Diary

Over the past few days, I’ve been preparing a set of materials that will eventually serve as a guidepost for everyone involved in the project.

I gathered references, reviewed earlier sketches, and refined the first cohesive concept artworks. These aren’t final designs — they’re visual cues meant to convey the mood, proportions, and overall character of the world.

Since Tornblade draws its aesthetic from Slavic and Celtic influences, I made sure those elements were already clearly present at this stage: raw forms, natural motifs, weathered architecture, and untamed landscapes.

The goal of these last few days was to organize everything so that anyone joining the project can immediately understand the direction — without guesswork or confusion. Now I’ve got a solid foundation to build on.

The Visual Guide is complete. It isn’t a technical document, but a description of the mood and emotions meant to guide the entire project.

Light, fog, grime, and rawness — the four pillars of Tornblade’s atmosphere — blend here with influences from ancient cultures. Subtle traces of Slavic and Celtic beliefs seep into the world’s aesthetic: in the shapes of ruins, in the ornaments, in the symbols left behind by vanished peoples. It’s not a historical reconstruction, but an echo of those cultures — something to be felt rather than explicitly shown.

I’m describing the sensations they’re meant to evoke: the weight of the fog that whispers of forgotten ancient places; the light breaking through the structure of the ruins; the rawness of materials built atop the remnants of old civilizations.

The Visual Guide is a map of atmosphere and instinct — a reference point for the moments when daily production work makes me lose sight of the emotions that started it all.
The world of Tornblade is beginning to take shape — and depth.

The initial version of the GDD is done.
I focused on what matters most — the core gameplay loop and the technical backbone.

I outlined the modular character setup, control schemes, camera systems, environmental interactions, as well as stats and UI.
There’s also room for the key shaders and materials that will define Tornblade’s visual identity.

This is the point where the project starts to gain structure and direction.
The next step on my path: a visual guide — something like an aesthetic journal to help me stay true to the original vision amidst the chaos of production.