Behind the Scenes: Stone Up

Shao and I were sitting in a Dunkin Donuts in early August, rained out of a research walk along the Singapore River, when I said, “Hey, wanna do something special for National Day?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, maybe just like a pregen character? Doesn’t have to be too elaborate.”

“I go toilet first, come back then talk.”

[two mins later]

“I know, let’s write a game where Munshi Abdullah, Farquhar and Tan Tock Seng have to save Raffles from his stone form.”

“… Did you gain some sort of crazy inspiration from your toilet break?! But ok, done.”

————–

And so the rush began to write a short and easy game for National Day. Here’s some behind the scenes of how we wrote Stone Up!

Characters
We considered various characters related to the pre-national history of Singapore, before deciding on these four, whom we felt to be suitable representatives of the realities of our ethnically diverse societies in this region (keeping the themes of ‘National Day’ in mind). Of course these figures are anachronistically used, but hey, this is fiction after all. It might very well be easier to find earth elementals and spirits of the sea than social equity, but we’ll take what we can get!

(If you’re interested in who the warrior merchant in our game is – go check out the history of Sayid Omar Aljunied, and look for the tale of Sayid Yassin! It’s very interesting!)

Kismet Recovery Mechanic
Majul- We NEVER SAY HOW THE 5 DOTS AND CRESCENT CAN BE DRAWN OK YOU DON’T SAY EH HOW COME SOUNDS FAMILIAR.

Artwork
Thanks to online websites with royalty-free images, it was easy to get some approximations of our characters and recolour some hair and skin to get our final avatars. I had to add glasses on Tock Seng though!

The map was drafted, then redrawn on watercolour paper and handpainted for a more rustic, treasure map look.

Thanks!
We’d like to especially thank all our Patreon supporters, without whom this would not have been possible. We’ve released some Stone Up-related printables for our patrons on Patreon as thanks, they will still be available if you join us now!

Until our next game, stay curious!