So far, we’ve talked a lot about how Samson feels to play -- from the weight of the vehicles to the brutality of the melee combat, and we’ve also answered some of your most frequently asked questions.

But there’s a big part of the experience we haven’t really unpacked yet: the art, the atmosphere, and the incredibly talented artists who brought Tyndalston to life. So today we sit down with Piotr Kupsc, our concept artist, to talk about Tyndalston itself -- why we see the city not just as a backdrop, but as a living, breathing character in the game.

Interested in SAMSON and its development? Wishlist the game on Steam, and join our Discord to get first-hand updates and be part of the community:https://discord.gg/xPHpQgKUwG

Early player apartment conceptWhat was one of the toughest challenges as an artist in building the city?

Finding a balance between visuals and gameplay has been an ongoing challenge. We are trying to make a believable city which the player can understand on a subconscious level, without breaking immersion whilst at the same time making navigating, fighting and interacting with the city fun and engaging.

Some strategies tackling the problem involved ensuring that the metrics were set in stone early on to avoid any costly rebuilds later down the line. We also prototyped early using grey boxes and test levels to feel out the size and scope of certain locations - if they worked or not; how exploration, driving, fighting would feel, which gave us confidence when jumping in and building the actual content.

Lastly, we prioritized making flexible, high quality modular building pieces which allowed us to make changes during the course of the project. If a location was too big or narratively wrong, or gameplay didn't flow, we could quickly adjust and iterate without sacrificing too much time.

Lower Bend looking toward Center Tyn

What are you most excited for players to experience when they explore the city themselves?I'm looking forward to people finding the various corners where we’ve put in quite a bit of effort and love in order to make them interesting. For example, areas that people would easily miss if they simply run by. There are also some areas you can get to that require a bit of effort but are visually satisfying to see.

The Keyhole

Was there an early decision that unexpectedly shaped everything that came after?

It was really interesting seeing how the early landmarks and roads shaped all of our city blocks. Also, how those grey city blocks with no names became full-fledged locations that people in the team got very attached to.

We started with some very high level world building together with our narrative team, which allowed us to plot out key locations on our island based on how they would roughly work in real life. Once things were in engine, there were inconsistencies which we ironed out after multiple back and forths with narrative and level design.
Some of the larger, more important landmarks like Cobbs Square, Golds Gas station and the Ditch (see images) worked as cornerstones of our district and remained static whereas smaller, less important ones moved around. With the blocks and roads in place we applied another round of narrative to figure out unique identities and themes for them, which helped us work on the medium level content: Placing correct architecture, be it parks, industrial machinery or blighted buildings.

Lastly, with the big and the medium information in place we could work on the fine details, such as the setdressing of walls, street corners, graffiti, murals and the like which conveyed a lot of mood. Together, all of this was built on the framework of the large landmarks and roads which remained true since the early days of development.

Golds Gas Station

Were there any inspirations that really helped define the city’s look?

We were heavily inspired by 90’s northeastern American cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia. There is a lot of amazing photography and footage from that time period which was invaluable to us. Seeing how areas changed with time, how places that now are parks used to be sprawling highways or how areas that look beautiful today used to be abandoned and run down.

Using such solid inspiration from history and life, we enhanced the references using our art direction pillars to achieve our look for the city: Violent, Statement and Parasitic.

With “Violent” we wanted to show violence in the city, the grittiness, the story of how people experienced violence toward each other, but also in relation to the environment. Broken walls, blighted buildings, gangs and the like. 

“Statement” is all about creating a big splash, big bold graphical compositions that have an impact. In a lot of the references we found amazing examples in very noisy and busy environments, where there would be a huge but simple abandoned mural that covered a whole wall creating visual rest for the viewer, and at the same time telling a story of the place.

“Parasitic” is the name for the corruption and greed we wanted to showcase. The spectrum of wealth inequality within the city from the richer neighborhoods such as the keyhole to the most blighted areas like the Ditch where our protagonist resides. Exploring the effect of gangs and law enforcement intersecting with our city.

Early Ditch concept

Do you remember the moment when the city finally felt “alive”?

There was no single moment when the city felt alive, as it was a recurring feeling that kept repeating itself. At first it was when we had the full city blocked out with some cars driving along the empty streets, which in hindsight was very basic but still felt alive and epic due to the sheer scale and complexity. Second, when the first textured city blocks appeared with NPCs walking around – that gave me the same kick. There was a longer pause as more things fell into place: lighting, more world-sim, audio, more city blocks before I felt it again in playthroughs. But the feeling always comes back nowadays when I play the game and I try to do something unusual and get surprised how well the characters sometimes react to what I’m doing, how naturally they behave, sure it’s not perfect, but when everything aligns it feels like you’re transported to Tyndalston.

Cobbs Square

Thanks for joining us on this look behind the scenes at how Samson’s world was crafted by our art team. Stay tuned for more, and don't forget to tell us what you’d like to see more of in future development diaries - whether that's more worldbuilding, concept art, vehicle design, character art, or how they all connect.
We also posted our first video dev diary on combat and vehicles last week, don't miss that: https://youtu.be/i111LkVVaYI?si=Kzzp9oAWi1qcKuMzInterested in SAMSON and its development? Wishlist the game on Steam, and join our Discord to get first-hand updates and be part of the community:

https://discord.gg/xPHpQgKUwG