Background and inspirations

After learning that the theme was “Rain or Shrine”, I thought of a lot of variants related to protecting a shrine using rain. Here are a few from my notes:

• Collect water when it rains to arm water gun turrets to put out fire enemies
• Give water offering to get upgrades
• Use water/wind gun to grow dandelions around the shrine
• Play as deity that creates rain clouds and controls wind to put out wildfire

I chose the last one because the idea of summoning an army of rain clouds seemed like an interesting mechanic and not too difficult to implement. I’ve had trouble with having a well defined objective in past game jams, so I decided to go with a simpler idea this time.

For the shrine, I had a feeling that most entries would use Japanese themes, so I decided to look at Korean temples and shrines for inspiration instead. The eaves of the roofs tend to have very detailed intricate designs, but those wouldn’t be visible from a top-down perspective, so I only showed the top view of the dark ceramic tiles. The designs often have turquoise blue and red hues, so I emphasized the turquoise color in the walls/screens since I found that color to be unique.

To fulfill the “Mythical Mashup” wildcard, I added a rain goddess inspired by the Mayan goddess Ixchel, who can depicted by a serpent headdress and carrying a water jug from which rain pours. The silhouette of the goddess in the start screen vaguely shows these two features. I had planned to have a cut-scene where the goddess comes into view and pours rain from the jug, but I ran out of time for the jam.

These inspirations are not obvious from the game, so I wanted to record them somewhere. If you’re reading this, I hope you found them interesting.