Exploring the Depths of the Heart in Iris.Fall

Bringing light to the darkness

The latest indie title by developers NExT Studios and publishers PM Studios is a story about a young girl finding her way through the halls of a theater. When you first begin playing Iris.Fall, you’ll notice a particular absence of color. This game is played within extreme shades of black and white and there’s a particularly good explanation for that.

In the opening scenes of this rather atmospheric indie game, you’ll see a young girl — titular character Iris — being plagued by nightmares until she eventually awakens to see a black cat at her window. Iris decides to follow the feline which leads her inside a building that is in ruins. This building is seemingly empty, but there is a sense of life in the puppets and paintings on the wall — someone was there at some point. In solving the game’s — frustratingly difficult — puzzles, you get closer and closer to the truth.

According to Fiona Guan, the game’s creative director and lead artist who spoke to SUPERJUMP, the inspiration behind the main character, but also the setting in which the game was initially meant to take place, was ancient Greek mythology:

“The protagonist of Iris.Fall is named Iris, which is the name of the Goddess of the rainbow. In the initial setting of Iris.Fall, the protagonist appeared like a colorful little rainbow. Both the protagonist and the scenes were rich in color and it all looked like a beautiful fairy tale.”

However, some issues with development lead the team down an entirely different path that eventually created the much grimmer world that Iris traverses through today.

“From early on, our team came across many problems regarding color-matching, minor gradients and transitions into 3D scenes, but also narrative direction,” explains Guan. “Our team members had previously worked on large-scale projects and indie game development was a new challenge for most of them. Our first attempt did not result in the way we had envisioned. After experiencing our first failure, we thought ‘why not try going in the complete opposite…

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