The Festival: Eastoria

[thefestival]

The Festival - Developer Log 18, 5/24/2026

Hello everyone! I hope you have all been enjoying the spring and early summer weather, even as it has been erratic here in the Northeast.

I paused development since the beginning of April, as I once again took care of personal matters, but since the last dev log, I have made a ton of updates big and small. Around the end of March, I released a new build of the game (which I didn’t announce here, oops), which, among other things, features the revamped Disco Elysium-style dialogue UI that Grace and I have been working on. I’m slowly returning to work now, but I wanted to give a quick update of what changes have been made since the end of February.

First off, the Disco-style dialogue UI has been reworked to better fit Grace’s mock-up. This means making the layout of all the elements a little more consistent and easier-to-read, though all of this will be replaced with polished assets in the near future.

Next up, a small but major update has been changing the lighting for the Hemmingward village section. I loved the red-orange saturation from before, but it always felt unnatural relative to daytime lighting, AND it would cause problems on certain monitors that were too saturated in their colors. While I don’t know if this current lighting scheme solves that issue entirely, it at least looks more consistent with the sort of lighting you would expect from a sunny fall afternoon.

Speaking of lighting, something I finally rectified was showing a storm + rain roll into Hemmingward after your first conversation in the Temple. The characters and flavor text referenced it previously, but now it is actually implemented – and it looks pretty nice! This was accomplished through loading a different sublevel for a lighting setup and using Unreal’s Niagara particle system to mimic rainfall.

I’m still working on fleshing out all possible interactable objects in Act I, but I have finally gotten around to making certain objects in the environment have their own dialogue. Everything you can click on and read about will tell you a little more about Hemmingward, and the world at large.

Last, but not least, we now have TRAITS incorporated into the game! They’re not present in every conversation (I’m still working on that), but upon starting a new game, you will be asked to choose two of six traits to reflect Nishma’s interests and expertise. These will grant unique dialogue options in conversation, and – potentially! – have more gameplay ramifications down the line. I’m basing this traits system directly off those found in Pentiment, and in Scarlet Hollow (pictured below).

Actually I lied, there was one last-er update after the traits one.

One significant quality of life change that I implemented was allowing the graphical quality to be adjusted/reduced from the settings menu. So far, this is the only real games setting that can be tweaked – I’m still working on figuring out the others. A major reason I implemented this is because Unreal seems to package games at the highest quality settings, so this will hopefully help people run the game on older/lower-end systems. Heck, my own PC tower from 2017 can’t run the game well if it’s anything higher than medium, so that incentivized me to incorporate this feature sooner rather than later.

I’ve been pacing myself with development, but I would like to have Act I of Hemmingward finalized relatively soon. Most of what is already in place and integrated into the game. I just need to add some ancillary content to flesh everything out, from item descriptions, to bonus interactions, to major animations (though minor animations may need more time to be integrated, and so may come at a later time after Act I is considered feature complete).

I can’t say for certain when I will have everything finalized, but pending any other major life updates, I am aiming for a tentative due date of the end of June to have the last of Act I’s features implemented and corrected. Even this may be overly ambitious, though it feels nice to slowly return to work on the game once again.

I will try to return again with another devlog soon – I have some other exciting developments in store, though it is too early to report on those.

I hope you all enjoy the transition from spring to summer in these coming weeks!

[thefestival]

Meet The Team - Grace Lewis

As mentioned in my last developer log, I have brought on two new collaborators to help with The Festival. The first of my colleagues who I'd like to introduce is Grace Lewis! She is a UI/UX artist, graphic designer, layout editor, and all-around creative who is helping me figure out the UI layouts for the game's various menus. She is also helping with accessibility and legibility considerations, which inform the rest of our design decisions.

By far the biggest element we've had to deliberate on has been the layout and fonts for the dialogue UI. After a few back-and-forths, Grace convinced me to go ahead with a Disco Elysium-style dialogue system, where you can scroll through a log of previous dialogue entries as the conversation progresses. Here are some of Grace's layout prototypes:

With that said, I'd like to give Grace a chance to promote herself in her own words.

Take it away, Grace!

Hi hello I'm Grace, a graphic designer/webdev person. I'm concepting the general UX of the game! It's my first game project, so I'm getting to try a lot of my experience from web and app work in a new format. Many things are familiar, some are unique-- it's always fun to see how mediums adjust design needs! On my own I do 500 other things, including designing my own games (tabletop), illustration, writing, and and and...you can find my work on my website here: https://incaseofgrace.com/

Welcome aboard, and glad to have you!

Everyone else, be sure to give Grace a follow!

In the following update, I'll go into more detail about the creative choices we've made up to this point. I'll share more about our progress from the past month, and share some really exciting news!

[thefestival]

The Festival - Developer Log 17, 02/25/2026

February blows, doesn’t it?

Hey folks, I’m back with the second developer log of the new year. While I’ve only recently been getting back to working on the project itself in Unreal, I’ve been quite busy behind the scenes. The biggest update I have to share is that I have been collaborating with two new teammates – Grace and Ashley! Grace is handling the game’s UI/UX considerations, with a heavy focus on the dialogue UI and accessibility concerns. Ashley, meanwhile, is providing Unreal programming assistance, and was introduced to me by my friend Morgan Taylor, who previously contributed 3D environment help in late 2024.

I will be making new “Meet the Team” posts dedicated to the two of them in the near future. For today, I’d like to talk about the game’s dialogue UI.

The dialogue UI I've been using up to this point has been very sloppy, but it got the job done. I was using a modified version of the ‘CRPG’ widget that came packaged with the DialogueTree plugin. I was using two royalty-free images as backgrounds, and I was using this font by Beary.dsgn on Fontspace. For the longest time, I wanted the game’s UI aesthetics to be based around pen and paper – dialogue would look handwritten, while browsing the game’s info menu (for objectives, mission details, and characters) would have you browse pages in a notebook (like in Pentiment or Life is Strange).

I would still like to build the game’s UI around these skeuomorphic designs, but I’m prioritizing legibility and ease-of-navigation over aesthetic choices for the time being. Enter @in-case-of-grace – she previously provided some vital feedback to me when I showed off a very early build of The Festival, especially on accessibility features. After reviewing her work, I asked if I could commission her to handle UI/UX considerations, to which she agreed. After some deliberation, a contract was signed, and she’s been iterating on blockouts since roughly the start of February.

She’s made a handful of prototype blockouts, but after some further discussion, we decided to try replicating Disco Elysium’s scrolling dialogue panel. Below are a couple different examples of what Grace has come up with so far:

And here is my attempt to incorporate it into the game from the past couple days:

It’s very rough. For now, I’ve gone back to basics – no fancy font or royalty-free images acting as backgrounds.

I was working on this the past few nights, and got programming help from Ashley last Sunday afternoon. I am still using a modified version of the basic CRPG dialogue widget from the DialogueTree plugin. To make a long story short, I made a copy of what I was using before, broke it apart to understand how it functioned, and then did my best to rebuild it and reformat it to match what you see above.

Overall, I think it addresses a lot of my major concerns with legibility while presenting a very unique framing for the dialogue. It also means I won’t have to make full-body sprites for each of the characters; I can get away with just having their portraits as icons (to be added at a later time).

I was initially reluctant to make a Disco-style dialogue UI window, because I did not want to rip off Disco Elysium wholeheartedly. Grace, being a TTRPG dev, assured me that I had no reason to worry, as many TTRPG devs are very chill about others incorporating their work into their own ideas*. To that end, I was willing to give it a shot, and this is the direction I’d like to keep heading in for the time being. We still have a lot of prototyping to do, but I’m very excited to see this new UI taking shape.

*(also, the original ZA/UM team members were very open about where they lifted their creative decisions from, so this adoption is in keeping with their ethos as well)

Lastly, while I was using royalty-free assets for placeholders, I plan on commissioning custom UI art for The Festival. I am currently figuring out how best to move forward with this, and I hope to update you all on it in the near future.

I’ll mention more about Ashley’s role in her introduction post. I will follow up with her and Grace’s “Meet the Team” posts as the next updates.

Hope you are all staying warm this brutal winter.

[thefestival]

The Festival - Developer Log 16, 01/13/2026

Happy New Year, everyone. This year has started off on a real bad note, but we press on all the same.

I haven’t actually done much on The Festival since the last time I updated the devlog, back at the beginning of December. A huge part of that is due to the holidays, since this is always such a hectic and busy time. Another part of it is due to the fact I got a small part-time job. I’m still looking for full-time work in the meantime, but at least this will help pay the bills while I look for something more permanent.

For today’s devlog, I’d like to talk a little about what my next steps are.

While I can’t move quickly at this time, I plan on continuing work on this project, and on the Hemmingward demo, no matter how long it takes. I really enjoy the work, and I’m deadset on having The Festival see the light of day as a complete project, even if everything’s up in the air. This project means a lot to me; while I’ve had to take more than one break in development this past year (and might not be able to get back up to speed for some time), I plan on sticking with it all the same.

That said, one major question has crossed my mind: should I take a breather by working on smaller game projects, or should I double down and focus on this even more?

A common theme with most developers is that they only get a successful game after working on a bunch of smaller projects. For some people, that means working on 5 tiny projects before hitting something big. For others, that might mean needing to make more than 100. It’s something Hakita* – ULTRAKILL’s creator – mentions in his video presentation, Some Things That I've Learned About Game Development While Making ULTRAKILL So Far, but I’ve heard it said elsewhere before. It’s not a hard rule, but in general we devs need to have some other projects under our belt before we can really press on with our first serious project.

I feel like I’ve arguably hit that threshold; I’ve worked on a handful of student games, as well as some game jam titles. It wouldn’t hurt to keep at it with game jams, or at least some smaller 3D projects, but part of me is a little nervous about being way in over my head with The Festival, considering the intended scale, hah.

Should I continue to focus the brunt of my creative energy on The Festival, the next question is … should I make it my full-time job?

I have been thinking through the pros and cons of this approach. I actually think that I’d be in a good position to pitch my game to publishers soon, but I want to polish Hemmingward as much as I physically can before formally applying to publishers. More pressingly, I would prefer to secure a full-time position elsewhere before I go all in on producing The Festival. There’s a few reasons for this, but I am afraid financial stability and life obligations are the biggest factors at play.

I’m certain I could balance full-time employment with work on The Festival once I eventually cross that bridge, but unfortunately I have to prioritize the former for the time being.

All the same, I will weigh my options, and continue development to the best of my ability.

I don’t know when I will update next, but I am hoping the best for you all as we start 2026 off on a very rocky note.

Free Venezuela, Free Minneapolis, Free Gaza, Free Ukraine.

[I've included a little extra commentary below the Read More regarding my interest in ULTRAKILL]

*As an aside, I’ve been giving special attention to Hakita and ULTRAKILL, here and in the last devlog, because I wound up getting super into ULTRAKILL the past month. My friend Dylan gifted it to me way back for Christmas 2020, but I only now just played it up to its latest release. ULTRAKILL’s development journey has grown into an inspiration for me given its humble roots as a passion project where Hakita was toying around with his friends before ultimately getting picked up by New Blood. I’ve been very moved by how much Hakita and his teammates loved working on ULTRAKILL and bringing it to fruition, and it’s restored some of my faith in my own project, despite the wildly different genre and subject matter. In general, I love seeing other creators succeed, especially other indie devs, and so I wanted to give ULTRAKILL a special shoutout in this devlog.

[thefestival]

The Festival - Developer Log 15, 12/04/2025

Hey gang, I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! While I've been pretty quiet since October, I spent the past month easing back into 3D modeling for this project. In August and September, I spent most of my free time hammering out the lore and backstory for Eastoria as well as its national religion of Pluralism. Meanwhile, since early November, I pivoted from that to making a load of miscellaneous environmental props to add more character and detail to the village of Hemmingward.

These objects range from gas cans to fences to new houses, and I intend on making even more models over the coming weeks. Below are a handful of screenshots showing the new and improved environment set pieces.

For this next part of the devlog, I'd like to expand upon my design philosophy a bit.

The village of Hemmingward, the setting for the game's pilot quest, is a rural hamlet within the woods. It's primarily modeled after Bosnian villages, but I am taking design cues from rural towns in other countries. One of the most crucial details about rural settings is that you will often see a ton of miscellaneous junk lying around, whether that be old cars, tools, or buckets. To that end, I wanted to stay true to life by having the various houses you pass by fell more "true to life" by having assorted props scattered around them.

Another change worth mentioning is in the texturing. Since 2019, I've made a lot of low-poly characters and models that use flat colors for their textures. I would sometimes incorporate textures if the model called for them, but overall the textures are still pretty simplistic, like with this piece I made in 2021:

I mostly carried that same ethos into The Festival - again, some models would have a light amount of detailing to give them more life, as you can see with Gil's freckles or with the wrinkles on Helvan and the Elderwomen of Hemmingward:

Recently, when modeling and texturing models, I decided to add extra layers to add smaller details to make them see more lively - wooden textures overlayed onto something that is supposed to be wood, and dirt/rust onto objects that have been exposed to the elements for a prolonged period.

These changes are minor, but I believe they add a ton of detail and character while remaining in line with the low-poly art style I've been using for this game. It's hardly unprecedented either, I've noticed loads of other games take a similar approach (like ULTRAKILL, with its low-poly models and pixelated textures).

For a little more technical detail, I have been using Substance Painter to texture my models since 2022. It might've seemed like overkill to use such a program for simply coloring in low-poly models, but it's been a godsend for simplifying my 3D art pipeline. What's more, automatically adding dirt and grime patterns to models has been a breeze, again inserting loads of detail into models with minimal setup. Though this is not yet finalized, note the difference in the Jeep's texture with and without the added layers of dirt and rust:

Lastly, my biggest accomplishments in the past week have been creating black walls to block off areas that Nishma/the player can’t see or access, and implementing a bit of code that allows the player to reset their camera view to its default rotation/zoom-in level. I’ll elaborate a bit on both for the sake of posterity and informing you all how I accomplished some of these details.

For the black walls, I was originally considering developing fog-of-war mechanics (the type you’d see in RTSes) to represent Nishma’s eyeline, but I didn’t think it would fit the overall style of The Festival. At least, not for the time being. I was going to block off inaccessible areas with black volumetric fog before I realized that it would be way too technically demanding on PCs. It was causing my nearly 9-year-old computer to freeze up in the editor, which confirmed that this would’ve been a terrible choice. So how did I accomplish the above black wall effect?

Planes. Giant friggin’ planes.

The texture is just a giant black square with a gradient texture applied as an alpha to give a sense of fading darkness.

For the camera reset functionality, I had to fiddle with the code more than I expected. I wanted this functionality implemented as a way of reorienting the player if they get all turned around; I got the idea from working in 3D programs like Blender and Maya, where pressing the F button focuses you on the model/vertex you’ve currently selected. You’d think under normal circumstances this would be as simple as telling the camera/spring arm component to reset its rotation to 0-0-0, right? That’s what I thought too.

Unfortunately, this was not compatible with the code I already had to rotate the player camera. The code looks like this, which I set up way back in Winter 2024; I got this from this tutorial on setting up a 3rd-person controller in Unreal, by Evans Bohl: [How to Make a 3rd Person Character in UE5]

You’ll note that the “Yaw Input” is modified by a float value based on whether we input Q (Positive value) or E (negative value). Whenever you’re rotating the camera, you are ‘adding’ or ‘subtracting’ from whatever the Yaw Input Value is supposed to be. For some reason, the yaw value cannot be ‘set’, it can only be ‘added’ to or ‘subtracted’ from. My solution? Keep track of the Yaw Input Value in a separate float variable, and have that multiplied by -1, then add *that* to the Yaw Input Value whenever the player presses F to reset the camera’s view. This equation adds to/subtracts from the current Yaw Input Value by its inverse value, which neatly solves my problem. Once that is done, the float variable from before is set to zero. The Yaw Input Value could be 52256315 as far as Unreal is concerned; once you press F, it resets to 0.

That’s all I have for this week. While I can’t say for certain when I will have the next devlog up, I am hoping to focus more on some of my creative choices for this project, as well as my plan(s) for the upcoming year – and factors I need to take into consideration as we all move forward.

As for other assets, I’m going to try making a few extra miscellaneous 3D models that I can add to the first village section, and then I am going to move on to making another pass at the Temple Interior level as well as Roxane’s House. Those will be the primary goals for the start of the new year.

Thank you for reading this far in this entry, and until next time, I hope you all enjoy the start of the holiday season!

[thefestival]

Lore Entry: Pluralism, The National Religion of Eastoria - Part I

Also known as: Eastorianism, Vartanianism, Eastorian Polytheism

Pluralism is a dualistic, gnostic religion centered on the worship and reverence of a multi-tier pantheon of divine figures. It is ostensibly a fusion of Christian, Hellenic, Manichaean, Zoroastrian, and Hindu ideals and beliefs. In writing this religion, I am drawing massive inspiration from the saints/patron deities system of Christianity, Hellenism, and other polytheistic pantheons; the dualistic notion of A Supreme Being and a Demiurge; Hermetic interpretations of what happens in the stars/in heaven will also happen on Earth; and lastly, the gnostic focus on enlightenment and esotericism.

In keeping with ancient gnostic traditions, Pluralists strive to uncover the truth of both the material world and the heavens. Literacy, debate, and monasticism are seen as the three major ways to achieve Gnosis, as they each are crucial to the pursuit of knowledge. Despite the emphasis on monasticism, laypeople and clergy are not encouraged to completely abandon the mortal world or their communities. Historically, monasteries provided for their surrounding communities, with some even acting as universities before the rise of secular institutions. Moreover, Pluralist teachings acknowledge that literacy and debate are not possible without interacting with others, and so must one be an active participant in the mortal world if one is uncover the truth of the universe.

What makes Pluralism unique is that it features two closely related pantheons – one for all the good and holy in the world, the Heavenly Pantheon, and one for the base, the immoral, and the evil, the Chthonic Pantheon. They each occupy their own spiritual planes – Heaven and Hell. The mortal, material world is situated in the middle of these two realms. Both pantheons consist of five tiers which correspond to inverted values, and I will elaborate on the specifics of each in a follow-up post.

The main symbol of the Pluralist faith is colloquially known as a "forktree". It symbolizes the branches of a family tree - two parents, one child. Its literal meaning is to represent the union of King Father Astros and Queen Mother Shiraz, two of the most critical deities of the faith, to create the child Silis, the most divine being in the universe. However, it also represents two components combining to create a third: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Pluralism is a fusion of Eastoria's various spiritual beliefs, deities, and mythologies into a coherent religious canon. For this reason, it is a central tenet of Eastorian nationhood, even throughout the Eastorian Civil War and up to the present day (2022 CE). The green-and-white flag pictured above was the official flag of the Commonwealth of Eastoria from 1545 to its dissolution in 1952, and it persisted throughout the rule of the Barchester Regime and the Civil War as a protest symbol in favor of Eastorian reunification.

Both the Heavenly and Chthonic pantheons first originated from Epyrian mythology (earliest religion scripture dates back to the first millennium BCE), but through centuries of coexistence, they were eventually adopted and repurposed to varying extents by the Kharmouzians, Bausqranians, Bihwarians, and Dolominians (along with the Barchesters when they arrived in the 9th century). These adoptions, in turn, spread back to Epyros, and were eventually codified by the legendary Saint Vartan the Defeated into a unified belief system in the mid-300s CE.

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ED NOTE: The above is a condensed version of what I've written in my own notes. In future posts, I hope to elaborate on the Heavenly and Chthonic Pantheons - I already have quite a lot written on them as is. Stay tuned for more worldbuilding and future updates!

[thefestival]

Lore Entry: The History of Eastoria

Eastoria is the fictional nation that The Festival takes place in, and sits on an isthmus that connects the continents of Parsinthe (this world’s equivalent to Eurasia) and Serengia (equivalent to Africa). It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited regions on the planet, with the earliest traces of human civilization dating back to 30,000 years ago. It is comprised of numerous ethnic groups, the largest six of which are the Barchesters, Epyrians, Kharmouzians, Bausqranians, Dolominians, and Bihwarians.

When several outside powers launched a protracted invasion of the region lasting from 1533 CE to 1545 CE, the previously divided subnations were forced to band together to cast out the invaders. Following their victory in 1545, the Commonwealth of Eastoria was established as a multiethnic confederation, and is widely regarded to be the birthplace of liberal democracy in the modern era.

Following its invasion by the Lycian League during the Global Conquest, the Commonwealth was deposed and succeeded by a puppet government known as the Barchester Regime. This new regime would preside over the subcontinent until 1989, and greatly disenfranchised the other five subnations. In 1989, a massive civil war broke out as the other five subnations attempted to overthrow the Barchester Regime. However, the country ultimately fractured along ethnic lines, with each subnation locked in perpetual conflict with the others for 32 years. The Eastorian Civil War, as it came to be known, would last until 2021, with the overthrow of the Barchester Regime and the other belligerent powers by the Citizens Militia, a revolutionary paramilitary group.

As of Summer 2022, when The Festival begins, the Citizens Militia is struggling to hold the country together. The subnation of Bihwaria remains independent, and refuses to join the new national order the C.M. is trying to establish. Likewise, numerous towns across the region have yet to make up their minds on whether to join the C.M. for whatever comes next. The country is in a precarious state; people are hopeful for the future, but weary that this fragile peace will fall apart again.

[thefestival]

The Festival - Developer Log 14, 9/23/2025

Hey gang, I’m back with another devlog. This one will be short, as it’s actually a prelude to a handful of lore entry posts I will be making over the course of the next couple days.

I spent my development time in August codifying and fleshing out the history of Eastoria, the game’s setting, and its national religion of Pluralism. I’ve also been running both documents by a handful of friends for feedback and critique. As with any good lore bible, I’ve written a ton of ancillary details and flavor text to flesh out my own thoughts and ideas as much as possible. However, for this blog, I’m going to keep their corresponding developer entries as reasonably short as possible. This will be good practice for showing what the actual entries might look like in game.

It is worth nothing that the subnations/major ethnic groups that comprise Eastoria were actually first conceived of (in broad strokes) about six years ago in 2019, for the project that preceded The Festival. The religion of Pluralism, meanwhile, first came to be in Fall of 2022. What follows will be my very recent attempts to combine all my disparate writings and notes through the years into a coherent canon and in-game history.

I’d like to give a special shoutout to my friends Loren, Dylan, Erik, and Milan for reading over the documents I wrote. It was very fun to read what you all had to say.

Stay tuned for the upcoming lore posts!

[thefestival]

The past few weeks, I have been working on lore entries for the country of Eastoria, where the game is set, and its national religion, Pluralism.

I'm planning on returning to artwork for the Hemmingward quest once I finish the current document for the history of Eastoria. I might also share the details of Pluralism in a Devlog, although it will be a condensed version compared to what I've written in my notes.

[thefestival]

Character Bios - Nishma Mauranyan

Starting today, I will be rolling out a series of posts dedicated to explaining the lore of The Festival and its cast, starting with our enthusiastic protagonist, Nishma Mauranyan.

Nishma Mauranyan

Full Name: Nishma Orissa Mauranyan

Age: 26 (Born September 24th, 1996)

Parents: Römaeros Mauranyan (Father), Eyla MacCarthaigh Mauranyan  (Mother)

Siblings: None (Only Child)

History

Nishma Orissa Mauranyan, 26, is an aspiring revolutionary from Nehrut, a small town at the base of the Arpos Mountains, on the border between Epyros and Kharmouz. She is of mixed heritage, having connections to all the major nations of Eastoria, which she takes immense pride in. When the Citizens Militia (C.M.) first arrived in her village in 2019, she knew that she wanted to join their ranks and help the people of Eastoria at large.

Her experience with these festivals is what inspired her to organize a festival for the entire country, as she hopes it will help bring people together after years of strife and agony. The festival in question – intended to observe the Day of The Divine Union (4/21) – has historically had major cultural and religious significance in Eastoria. It is the traditional Eastorian new year, marking the beginning of Spring and symbolizing the birth of new life, but it has not been observed on a national level since the start of the Eastorian Civil War.

Nishma is working to arrange the festival with a litany of characters. Her main allies are Gil Yurez, a soldier of the Citizens Militia who has been assigned to watch over her as she travels across the country; and Quartermaster Jonathan Holmes, an officer in the Citizens Militia who assists Nishma with the planning and logistics for the festival. Given the religious nature of the festival, Nishma must also answer to Patriarch Haytham and Matriarch Zaineb, the head priests of the Common Temple where the festival will be held.

Struggles

Nishma is energetic and very eager to help people, but she is also in many ways naïve. Though she and her village felt the pressures of the war bearing down on them, she nonetheless comes from a relatively privileged upbringing as her home was left mostly unscarred by the War. As such, she doesn’t have the same traumas as many of the characters she meets, and she runs the risk of reacting inappropriately or accidentally offending people.

These difficulties often rear their head when she is convincing people of the virtue of her mission to organize the festival. Some see it as frivolous, and some may even insult her for not being a “true” Eastorian because she has not suffered as much as they have.

Another issue in this vein is that she is a small-town girl who is finally experiencing the rest of the outside world for the first time in her adult life. Many parts of Eastoria are nothing like her home of Nehrut, and she will have to adjust quickly if she wants to complete her mission. 

Her main challenges in the game are twofold: she must constantly justify her decision to organize a festival to others, and she must strike a balance between being assertive and accommodating in her dialogue.

Justifying her actions will not take a one-size-fits-all approach; some characters may need to be convinced using arguments Nishma is not used to making. Meanwhile, Nishma can run the risk of being too standoffish if she acts too mean or refuses to compromise with people, while she risks being taken advantage of if she is ‘too nice’ and does not put her foot down or set boundaries.

Nishma must also contend with a third struggle – she deep down worries that she cannot be considered “Eastorian” like everyone else because of her comparatively-privileged upbringing. Between this and justifying the necessity of the festival, she feels she must put in far more work to prove herself ”worthy” of being treated as a true Eastorian.

In truth, her desire to be seen as Eastorian goes hand-in-hand with her desire to be seen as a real adult. She wants to be taken seriously, and she wants to set her own path forward for the future. While conveyed in more abstract terms in-game, Nishma is autistic and has obsessive compulsive disorder. For these reasons, she struggles with anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and adapting to her ever-changing circumstances.

Despite all this, and the many other difficulties she will face, Nishma is determined, persistent, and enthusiastic to tackle the hard work that awaits her.

[thefestival]

Hello everyone, I updated Nishma's bio slightly with a few minor revisions. I will sporadically repost and reblog old posts like this whenever I make edits like I did recently. More to come!

[thefestival]

Character Bios - Gil Yurez

Full Name: Gillian Nazurena Yurez

Age: 30 (Born June 04, 1992)

Parents: Hernando Enrique Yurez (father), Mariupla Oqtavia Vasquez Yurez (mother)

Siblings: Nazurena Gillian Yurez, 27

History

Gillian Nazurena Yurez, 30, is a corporal within the Citizens Militia (C.M.), assigned by Quartermaster Holmes to protect Nishma Mauranyan while she carries out her preparations for the festival.

Gil spent her entire life up to early adulthood as a refugee. Her family was expelled from Bihwarian territory early in the War, as they are part of an ethnic minority, the Skipchecs (an itinerant group similar to the Roma, primarily based on pan-Hispanic culture*). Gil and her sister Nazurena had to grow up quickly to survive; they worked many low-paying, back-breaking jobs along with their parents to sustain themselves. They never stayed in one place for too long, constantly trying to seek gainful employment elsewhere while also avoiding being caught in the crossfire of active war zones.

Gil and her family survived by the skin of their teeth. She had a falling out with her parents from 2012 onwards when she eloped with a man – Markus Angfelsk - who promised to provide for her after years of hardship. Unfortunately, things did not work out between the two, and they only barely managed to make ends meet by taking on a range of difficult and poor-paying jobs. Neither Gil or Markus particularly cared for one another - screaming matches were common - but neither was willing to walk away or call things off. They were stuck in a toxic relationship, and ultimately codependent on each other.

Things started to take a turn for the better for Gil when the Citizens Militia began gaining ground elsewhere in Eastoria, circa 2017-2018. The tales of heroism, bravery, and martyrdom she would hear inspired her to improve her material conditions, bit by bit. When the revolutionaries finally arrived at her doorstep in the summer of 2018, she eagerly joined up - and abandoned her old life with Markus.

As a soldier, Gil received a political education from the C.M., becoming a true believer in the righteousness of socialism and communism. She sees the victory of the Citizens Militia as the only opportunity for a better life for her, her family, and for the rest of Eastoria. In 2021, after years of estrangement, she finally reunited with her parents, soon discovering that her sister also became a soldier for the C.M.

Struggles

Having grown up as a refugee and as a member of a heavily marginalized group, Gil has much to contend with and work through. As a Skipchec woman, she is not greatly attached to her heritage or to her identity as Skipchec, but she is keenly aware of the hatred many Eastorians harbor for her people, and the abuses and violence carried out against them (and her). Despite her suffering at the hands of Eastorians, she hopes that the New Eastoria, under the guidance of the Citizens Militia, will be a truly egalitarian society without class or ethnicity.

Joining the C.M. has given her a sense of normalcy as well as purpose, but the traumas of her past still haunt her. She resents talking about her life prior to joining the C.M., though she is much more enthusiastic talking about her exploits as a soldier. To that end, she avoids talking about her personal life whenever possible, and prioritizes her responsibilities above all else (often to her own detriment).

Though not officially conveyed through the game’s narrative (as of September 2025), Gil suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder. It is not obvious in her day-to-day life, but she is constantly struggling with managing episodes of intense, fluctuating emotions. She’s had no shortage of outbursts and bad mental health days while serving as a soldier, but she is also considered professional, friendly (if at times distant), and dependable by everyone she works with.

While Gil sincerely believes in equality and prosperity for all, she has immense trouble reconciling that with her anger towards the Bihwarians, who forced her family out of their home, and the Barchesters/Barcleighs, who carried out campaigns of persecution and extermination against other Skipchecs. This extends to her supervisor, Quartermaster Jonathan Holmes, who worked as a low-level worker in the Barchester government, and other Barchester/Barcleigh personnel within the C.M. Despite this tension, she prioritizes the unity of the cause above all else, and is willing to set aside her distrust for now. How this will impact her in the future remains to be seen.

Interactions with Nishma

Gil did not know what to make of Nishma when they first met. Nishma struck her as sheltered and naïve. She didn’t understand how a girl like her could survive the War unscathed. Once she saw how capable, empathetic, and hardworking Nishma was, however, Gil started taking a liking to her new partner.

Through the course of the game, Gil will start off formal and distant towards Nishma but will slowly warm up. As the story progresses, Gil comes to see Nishma as this incredibly grounding force in her life – provided Nishma doesn’t make any outrageous mistakes. While it remains to be seen what will test the limits of their relationship – and Gil’s patience – the two women are an excellent foil to each other. Nishma is friendly and eager, Gil is professional and reserved.

Additionally, while Gil is ambivalent towards her heritage and her past, she can potentially come around to view both in a different light, with Nishma's help and encouragement.

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*Editor's Note: As someone not of Roma descent, I wish to tread carefully with the depiction of the Skipchec. Being of Hispanic descent, I consider the plight of the Skipchec analogous to the violence and struggles faced by Hispanic migrants, workers, and refugees in the United States. Nevertheless, sensitivity readings and revisions will be necessary for getting their depiction right.

[thefestival]

Meet The Team - Flapjack

In my last update, I mentioned that I brought on another collaborator, my good friend Flapjack (@flapdoodlez). His two contributions to the project so far are very significant - he made this promotional poster:

And he made the following illustrations for the game's opening sequence:

Here is what the new introduction looks like in motion:

As with my fellow collaborators, I asked Flap to write an introductory post, including links where you can find more of his work:

Hey! I’m Flapjack, I’m a freelance 2D artist and I drew the key art and cutscene illustrations for the Festival. A lot of my past work has been used for prints and events so I’m excited to be able to contribute something to a video game! Thank you so much Christian for giving me the chance. I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember but only recently did I delve into a few video game adjacent projects here and there and it’s been immensely fulfilling. Mostly working on character concept art, but I hope I can pursue creating art for games and making games in general. Since a lot of my work is in progress right now I’m not a frequent poster these days, but if you wanna see my art I’m @flapdoodlez pretty much everywhere! If you’re not big on socials you can check out my portfolio site: https://flapdoodlez.art/

Super grateful for your art, Flap, and I look forward to continuing our collaboration in the near future!

Speaking of which - I am slowly getting back into the swing of things with work on the project. I've been taking minor steps the past week, but I intend to ramp up my efforts soon. The next big thing I would like to work on, though, would be lore documents for the characters, nations, and religion of Eastoria. I'll be revising what I previously wrote from way back in 2023, and codifying stuff I haven't written down yet.

Hopefully I'll have more exciting news to share soon!

[thefestival]

The Festival - Developer Log 13, 6/29/2025

[Play the latest build HERE!]

Hello again! I deeply apologize for the radio silence the past four months. It has been an incredibly eventful time, and I will do my best to summarize everything concisely.

The two most important things to state upfront are:

1.) I finished grad school, and officially graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Digital Media.

2.) The Festival: Hemmingward is still active. However, I will be taking a prolonged hiatus for the summer while I recuperate and jobhunt.

This past March and April, I was hard at work preparing to put my work on display at the University of Connecticut’s Benton Museum of Art, where it was displayed from March 31st to May 9th. I presented my work alongside my fellow third-year graduate students in the Department of Digital Media & Design along with those in the School of Fine Arts [Link for more info on the exhibition]. I’ll admit it wasn’t as ‘finished’ as I would’ve liked it to be – the current demo only features Act I, which is still very rough around the edges at this stage - but getting to see people play the game was something else. I loved talking with people about the game and explaining my creative choices and inspirations.

There was a larger reception on April 24th which drew a significant crowd. It was an absolute honor to present my game at the Benton, and below you can see some of the photos I took from the exhibition, featuring my lovely friends and colleagues.

Following the exhibition, I finalized and submitted my written thesis, wherein I explained my motivations for making this project and the development process. I wouldn’t say it’s a “conventional” academic paper, but I had a ton of fun writing it. Of note, I went into great detail about No Hegemon, the project that preceded and paved the way for The Festival. It’s this project that led me to create the game’s world and the setting of Eastoria. You can read my paper HERE.

One major update that I did not get to mention previously for development has been that I brought on another friend, Flapjack (@flapdoodlez), to provide art for the game. He made the promotional poster you saw at the beginning of this post. He also produced the following slides for the game’s introduction, which are upgraded versions of drawings I previously made:

He also wrote an introductory post, which I will include in a separate post. Overall, I have been very happy to work with Flapjack on this endeavor.

As for the fate of the project: I always planned to continue development on this game after graduating UConn. At the present, I am taking a hiatus to rest up and compose myself after an arduous past two years. I will not go into detail here, but 2023 and 2024 were extremely taxing for personal reasons, and only recently have I caught a reprieve.

For now, I am prioritizing finding stable employment. Jobhunting is no easy endeavor, and I am seeking employment opportunities outside of the games industry for the time being, given the instability and mass layoffs that have been plaguing it these past few years. I will be working on The Festival: Hemmingward during my free time, and I will also spend the next few months figuring out the next steps for the larger project.

I can’t say for certain when I will next update this developer blog (aside from Flapjack’s introductory post). I am hoping to return to work within the next two months, and have The Festival: Hemmingward finished within the year. I am hoping to detail my long-term plans in later blog entries; for now, I will take some time to enjoy the summer, and try to keep sane and healthy in these turbulent times.

Dear readers, I wish you all health and happiness this summer, too. I can’t wait to show you all more of what I have been working on down the line.

In the meantime, you can play the latest build of the game HERE: https://cornelius-of-lykia.itch.io/the-festival-hemmingward

[thefestival]

The Festival - Developer Log 12, 2/23/2025

Hello once again!

Following up from the incremental changes I mentioned in the last devlog, I have reworked the intro sequence for the game from its rough, initial state. You can watch a quick playthrough of the intro here:

The intro song is based off of Pete Seeger's Solidarity Forever, which in turn is based off Battle Hymn of the Republic. It was composed by Faith last semester, and we're both glad to see how well it ultimately works for the introduction as it is here.

Among numerous other things I have reworked, I have also changed the location and circumstances in which the player encounters Helvan Dynicus, the businessman encroaching upon Hemmingward.

In the original game, you ran into him as he was hanging outside the temple, the meeting place for you and the Elderwomen. While I included a narrative reason for this being the case initially, I decided it still felt weird to have just standing there as you first walked up to the temple. It was also entirely possible to miss talking with him, which is an element of the game I wanted to play with intentionally, but I believed it created too many other complications that would have to be accounted for in other parts of the story.

To that end, I decided to have him meet you on the road into town. You and Gil find his car parked right in the middle of the road, and you have to, politely or rudely, ask him to move his car out of the dang way.

The biggest reason I took the intro in this direction was because it forced a confrontation with Helvan Dynicus, and in a more creative setting. The thought of him blocking your path into town was also a good way to hint that this guy does not take the wellbeing of others into consideration, which will be pivotal much later in the story.

That said, there's a lot of other details I wish to change overtime, and in the near future. While I'm really happy with the typewriter effect, I don't know how I feel about either the 'writing' sound effect, or the current font, which may be way too small and skinny to read effectively.

While my exact schedule for work is up in the air this moment, I will be focusing the brunt of my efforts on the rest of Act I. Given my progress so far, I already have the assets and most of the script built out for everything here. As such, I am hoping reworking what I already have will be less time consuming overall.

There’s still a long road ahead – for both this final semester, and for this project overall, but we press on all the same.

On an unrelated note, I am posting this dev log right around the time that Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

While the political situation right now is incredibly murky, with our current administration attempting to coerce Ukraine into surrendering, I want whoever reads this to know that I stand with the people of Ukraine, and I wish them peace and prosperity on *their* terms.

Solidarity Forever. 🌻🇺🇦

[thefestival]

The Festival - Developer Log 11, 2/14/2025

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I am very happy to report that I’ve made a lot of incremental progress on polishing The Festival these past couple weeks.

A lot still remains to be done, but I’ve incorporated a few quality of life changes such as a readable notebook UI system, audio cues, and a revamped intro sequence (which the above screenshot is derived from).

I’m preparing to go to an Unreal Demo day at Quinnipiac University on Thursday the 20th with my teammate Faith, so I have been working on polishing the opening minutes of the game in preparation for that. I still need to implement a lot of other changes to have the game ready for my school’s MFA art exhibition in May, but I will write my progress towards that in a future update.

For now, the big thing I wanted to share tonight is a full video playthrough of the game, played and recorded by my partner @boyslash. This video showcases the most recent build of the game (from early December 2024), which will serve as an incredibly useful point of reference for the future in showing how far along the game has progressed.

You can watch the video here:

I will try to follow up with more updates after the Quinnipiac University event this week.

Thank you all for sticking with the game this long, and I hope you all have had a wonderful Valentine’s Day 2025!

[thefestival]

The Festival - Developer Log 10, 1/28/2025

Happy New Year!

We are still kicking, and I am here to give a long-overdue devlog to explain the state of the project.

The Festival: Hemmingward, the game’s prototype quest, is now officially in pre-alpha. It is available to play as a *very* rough early build, but it is playable from beginning to end with three distinct chapters, and a multitude of characters to speak with. You can play the current build of the game here: https://cornelius-of-lykia.itch.io/the-festival-hemmingward

I will go into more detail on what the past few weeks of development entailed below the read-more cut.

The last time I provided an update, I was working on character sprites, and including the final act + climax of the game in the build.

Unfortunately, I had a family emergency come up during the latter half of November, so I had to put parts of the project on hold while I addressed that. I was still able to get enough done to cross the finish line for the semester, though. I incorporated the final story beats for Act III between Thanksgiving and my December MFA committee review, which was December 9th, 2024.

When I went into my review, I thought I was going to have to be on the defense, so to speak. I had a lot of complications arise that still needed to be addressed before I had a polished or even semi-polished experience, and I received a lot of critical feedback which showed me that this game still has a ways to go before being feature complete. Thankfully, however, my MFA committee was very impressed with my overall progress, imperfections and all. I received a lot of praise for how much effort had been put into the game, and I was approved to continue to my final semester, which is where I am currently at.

Once the Fall 2024 semester ended, I wound up taking an extended break from the project. I barely touched the game files between the end of the semester and now. It has been a little struggle to get back into the swing of things for this final semester, but I am easing back into development.

The first thing I need to address at this time is revising the story’s script and sequence of events based on crucial feedback I received. Bekir has reviewed the second drafts of Act I and Act II, and has given me a lot of pointers on how to proceed. While I’m worried I won’t have enough time this semester to revise everything to my liking, the amount of dialogue necessary to revise is less than the amount of work necessary to revise everything between the first and second acts.

The ultimate game plan from this point onwards is to have a semi-polished game ready to present for my Spring 2025 thesis defense, and at UConn’s MFA exhibition in March/April. After I graduate, I plan on continuing work on the pilot quest until I am comfortable calling it a finished game. My schedule after graduation is very hazy right now; I must first work on securing gainful employment, which will determine how everything plays out in the short term.

That being said, I am very excited to continue development, and I look forward to sharing future updates!

[mousidy]

the author's barely disguised hobbies and interests