How it is made
An open look behind the scenes: what The Aeonians are built with, which problems came up, and where the journey is heading.
Tech stack
- Game
- Godot 4.7, GDScript. A 2D journey game with parallax depth layers, no enemies, only encounters and stances.
- Site
- Astro on Cloudflare (Workers + R2), Tailwind. Served statically, bilingual (DE/EN), in the same brand look as the M.d.Ae. universe.
- Demo in the browser
- Godot web export. The large game files live in Cloudflare R2 (Cloudflare allows only 25 MB per worker file, the game is bigger), and the WASM is served gzip-compressed.
- Characters
- AI-generated (Gemini), but reference-conditioned: every frame is drawn using the standing figure as a reference so Menelaus looks the same across all poses.
Behind the scenes
Smooth motion without more frames
The walk frames are each painted by the AI and slightly different, which read as jitter. Instead of generating more frames, the engine now blends each frame softly into the next (crossfade). That smooths the motion regardless of how different the frames are, and needs fewer frames, not more.
Light instead of a face
Menelaus has no face and no ordinary hands: where a face and hands would be, a muted blue-white light glows. It fits the idea of the Aeonian and had to be wrung out of the AI against its dark style.
A 96 MB game in the browser
The demo runs straight in the browser, no install. Because the files are too big for normal delivery, they come from object storage (R2); the slim loader fetches them, and nothing loads until you actually click start.
Roadmap
- Now
- Spreewald demo playable in the browser. The character and its motion are freshly reworked.
- Next
- More content on this page (devlog, this Q&A), polish on world and sound.
- Later
- The further stations of the journey (Vienna, Versailles) and the full version. An English game edition is being considered (the site already is).
- Idea
- Letting the same journey be experienced from another perspective, other figures of the circle, other choices, none right or wrong.
Questions & answers
Why a game with no enemies and no combat at all?
It is in the eye of the beholder how you define combat. I am convinced that life itself can be a struggle, and that you do not always have to fight with visible weapons or violence. Words are often the stronger weapons.
What is the Aeonian, in one sentence?
The Aeonians, yes, plural, are beings that strive for perfection, just like you and me.
Why AI images, and where do you draw the line?
I consider myself creative, just not at drawing. So it is wonderful to use AI to quickly work out different versions as a basis, which are then refined by hand.
What has been the hardest part of the project so far?
Honest answer? Finding the time. And the little perfectionist in me, learning to say: well, there is an MVP, and that is good enough.
What should someone feel who plays the demo?
Feeling is a hard question. I would be glad if the person could escape the real world for a moment and, at best, leave the game with a new thought or a smile.