At So Many Games, we are consistently mesmerized by the way indie game studios remix and rematch conventional game mechanics to make something new. The hybridization of genres, the infusion of game stories into game structures, and the titration of various disciplines to uncover something unique—this is the work of both science and wizardry.
Thus, you can understand my curiosity when I first heard about Ambrosia Sky at Ludonarracon last year. This game showcased a mix of Metroidvania exploration and PowerWash Simulator gameplay within the backdrop of a compelling narrative. I was equal parts impressed and befuddled by what I saw. How could Soft Rains, the studio behind the game, hold all of these disparate parts together?
Fortunately, we were given the opportunity to interview Joel Burgess, Studio Head, and Kaitlin Tremblay, Narrative Director, at Soft Rains to learn more about their design process. In this discussion, you will see just how carefully their team constructed the connective tissue between their systems and stories.
Can you tell us a bit more about how and why your studio was formed, as well as what your studio is most passionate about?
Kaitlin: We formed Soft Rains at the end of 2022 with the intent of building a studio where we could collaborate with others and make good games that leveraged our differing interests and skill sets. While there are tentpole things we are excited about as a studio (i.e., nuanced storytelling, striking art direction, depth of mechanics), we’re hugely excited about what sort of games we can only make with this exact team. It’s less, for us, about making a specific type of game and more about making something special that has everybody’s DNA in it, a reflection of everybody who comprises the studio rather than one or two people’s visions.
The death “spaces” in Ambrosia Sky are colorful and ecologically vibrant with diverse types of fungus and other organic material. How did you balance the beauty of these locations with the somber reality of the tragedy that has occurred within them?
Kaitlin: Something that always fascinates me about ecology, and why I think we were drawn to mushrooms and fungus in the first place, is how an ecosystem necessitates aspects of it in different stages. Death is often a necessary part of ecological cycles. Humans are a part of the ecosystem, just like anything else, and seeing humanity as a part of the ecosystem, for me, is a way to honour our role in it. How can our deaths be a part of how ecosystems work? It’s something Dalia reckons with directly in the game too: an ecosystem thriving despite the tragedy, and this is an important part of her beginning to understand humanity’s need to co-exist within an ecosystem rather than strive for mastery over it.
What was the vision behind reframing the grim and often desensitizing responsibility of a death cleaner into something more exciting and playful in Ambrosia Sky? How did you pull this off without trivializing or commodifying death?
Kaitlin: I think what was compelling to us was balancing these two different aspects and looking at how they reinforce each other rather than sitting in direct contrast. Dalia’s job is sombre; it is serious, but the action and the playfulness of the cleaning are meant to highlight that through the juxtaposition. The meditative cleaning and the action sequences work like a shadow, highlighting the more sombre death rites and story moments. They’re not meant to undercut, but rather to provide these moments of processing the larger story and emotions.
How do the power-wash simulator and Metroidvania design help tell the story and mystery at the core of the experience? Why is “cleaning” the chosen method of interactivity within the game?
Kaitlin: For me, as a storyteller, there’s something really appealing about having these moments of play that are soft and meditative as a way of providing processing space for the story. Those moments of cleaning or searching are where Dalia (and hopefully the player) can kind of sit with the story and process the emotions, because that’s how it works in real life (at least for me). Doing mundane things or chores is an important part of my emotional processing, where I’m digesting and sitting with the emotions.
In previous interviews, you have said that Dalia takes a very caring and empathetic approach to the death ritual, yet does this put her at odds with her role as a scientist? Why or why not?
Kaitlin: I don’t personally feel like they are at odds, since her role as a scientist is focused on helping humanity. Humanity is at the heart of what she’s doing in either capacity, so ensuring she’s approaching both aspects was important to us. Part of the story is Dalia reckoning with when she loses sight of the humanity in her scientific work and what happens that causes her to pull back toward that empathic centre.
Why did you choose Saturn’s Cluster as the setting? How did this setting influence your level design as the player explores the derelict spaces?
Kaitlin: Because we were building this strange sci-fi world, with alien fungus growing out of the corpse of a dead cosmic leviathan, we wanted something familiar to ground this against, to help anchor players in this world. Ultimately, setting it in Saturn gave us this familiar anchor point to then let us get a bit weirder off of because we didn’t have to do all of the extra work of establishing a totally distinct galaxy and its rules but could instead focus on extending and playing with the new elements we wanted to introduce. Saturn also gave us a lot of storytelling momentum in terms of Earth’s history and the Cluster as one of the first settlements in humanity’s cosmic expansion, which then gets left behind as humanity continues to settle further and further into the cosmos.
When you first introduced Ambrosia Sky, it was set up as a three-act game, released sequentially in an episodic format. What caused you to change to a two-act structure, and why did you decide to make act two a free update for those who purchased act 1?
Kaitlin: From a narrative point of view, the switch to the two-act structure really helped me maintain the momentum we were building with the story. Rather than slow it down, making it two acts instead of three allowed me to just focus in on that momentum and deliver a tighter story experience that still hit the major beats we wanted to hit and that still told Dalia’s story the way we wanted to tell Dalia’s story.
How does nostalgia factor into Dalia’s journey? What went into the decision to make the Cluster, her home?
Kaitlin: The idea that this place would have a deeper meaning to Dalia was also sort of integral to the way we thought of her character arc and how her emotions would mirror and ground the crisis she is there to uncover. She knows this place, and because it’s a bit of a surreal world at times, she’s able to directly tell the players what is normal and what isn’t normal. Her having that knowledge allowed her to operate as a grounding baseline for the stranger parts of the worldbuilding, which are also giving us access to a deeper layer of storytelling as well. She is here to do a job, but that job revolves around people she knows and has feelings for and memories of. It added that extra bit of emotional complexity to her navigating this crisis, making it personal and not just another job.
Players who enjoy immersive sim and power wash gameplay also tend to enjoy the feeling of a 100% complete cleaning. How do you deliver an experience that resonates with the completionist without it feeling tedious or unapproachable to those players who are more interested in the story over the mechanics?
Joel: Every level in Ambrosia Sky has an initial objective – perform a death ritual for a specific person, retrieve a rapidly decaying biological sample, and so on. Cleaning fungus is never an explicit objective for players in these first runs of a level. We do this because we know our players approach Ambrosia Sky with motivations. To some, the fungus is an obstacle to be overcome; others may slip into a satisfying zen state and become distracted by cleaning a huge, room-filling fungal colony; and yet others will scour every corner of the level like it’s their job. We embrace all of those players.
That said, we also want to give completionist cleaners that classic experience, which is why we also track the percentage of cleaning left in a level and allow players to revisit a space. On those revisits we display an overall completion in the main UI, with area-by-area tracking as well.
Ambrosia Sky has been described as a meditative journey. How does that tone extend to the sound design as well as the game’s score?
Joel: Some of the earliest people to work on Ambrosia Sky were our Audio Director, Michelle Hwu, and composer GREJ. World-building is a foundation for us at Soft Rains, and we felt that the soundscape of our game would be a huge component of the experience. So we talked early and often about how the Cluster was built, what musical voices and instrumentation would feel authentic in that space, and what emotions the game may elicit. Michelle went to great lengths to lay an aural foundation through the sounds of the world, integrate those into the game, and produce a balanced listening experience. GREJ (aka Gregory Harrison) composed an original score for the game that draws upon his deep experience and our vision for the world and focuses it through his skill as a composer. The resulting audioscape of the game reflects the emotional journey of Dalia and, we hope, the player.
If this conversation was as fascinating to you as it was to us, you can check out Act 1 of Ambrosia Sky, now available on Steam, with Act 2 releasing in early August. If you purchase Act 1 before Act 2 releases, the second act will be included as a free update upon release. You can also find the Ambrosia Sky devlogs on the game’s Steam page or blog for a more extensive look into the game world, or you can follow Soft Rains on YouTube for additional interviews and game streams. Happy cleaning, space witches!
