Elaiya's Heart Crusade is a dungeon crawler crossed with a coming of age ritual in the style of a top down pixel game. This particular story follows Elaiya on her 23rd birthday, the age in which her village performs the ritual. All of them start the same, with their heart ripped out and in its place is a necrotic heart by The Entity. As Elaiya, you must successfully complete your trials, gain your heart pieces back, and prove to your village that you are worthy of your place.
Nekropis Map
Where Elaiya's Home Lies
Where Elaiya lives is known in this world to be the Skylands. The entire town is built upon the plateaus of cliffs that touch the sky. The people are open, kind, but very cautious and set in their ways. The town is completely self sustained and rarely needs someone to travel to the inner city. However, many travellers come to trade for things like our pink plums, or activities like swimming in the fresh mountain lake. Every once in a while, of course there are the people who try to infiltrate the caves or interrupt rituals, in which both are not to be accessible to outsiders. It's not uncommon to physically remove people and two people have died.
Game Updates
I initially named the town where Elaiya is from The Skylands, however it (for obvious reasons) kept getting confused with Skylanders therefore I decided to change the same to Nekropis. I used the Greek root "nekros" as in death and dead tissue. I think it makes more sense anyway as the entire lore is based on dying hearts.
Elaiya has three looks. The first is her Wake Up Fit, which is worn briefly until player finds the Ritual Fit. When Elaiya puts on the Ritual Fit, her eyebrows turn white. Elaiya looks like this until she partakes in the Ritual. Post-Ritual Fit will occur after Elaiya's Heart is ripped out and replaced with a necrotic one. Her hair will turn white once the replacement is complete and Elaiya is transported to the cave entrance.
Imagining what it would be like sitting off the edge of the cliffs facing the entrance to the ritual and cave systems.
A creature concept where the hardened fungal growth eventually became covered in a blanket of moss as time progressed.
I just like moss and fungi.
This is Spanish Moss.
I used Stardew Valley and Mei's One Shot video as reference for creating the walking animations for Elaiya. These include idle left, idle right, walk left, walk right, walk up and walk down.
I combined two alphabet scripts with some of my own ideas to create this language.
Quadoo Alphabet
Prototype EdgeWrite alphabet
I intend to use horses and other travel companions as a way to travel quicker.
