Hi, my name is Lorenzo Redaelli and I wanted to tell you about how we moved Milky Way Prince – The Vampire Star to PlayStation and specifically how some of the PS5 exclusive features allowed us to enhance the experience. I’ll also tell you a little bit about my inspiration for the game and its look and feel!
The relationship of the two main characters, Sune and Nuki, is usually mediated through their phones. In the original PS5 version, we used speaker controls and haptic feedback to simulate vibrations and voice messages, and added haptic feedback to enhance the way the game expresses Nuki’s emotions through scenes. Also, I can finally render the drawings at their original resolution with no effect, with the game keeping steady at 120fps, visible in movements and transitions of the delicate camera.
As for inspiration, I drew inspiration from Japanese animation director Kunihiko Ikuhara, a master of symbolic storytelling and skilled at presenting complex concepts and sometimes unable to convey a single word. simple way. His Mawaru Penguindrum anime series is my most important reference: in-game settings are drawn from Robert Wilson’s essential and minimal landscapes and from the smoky and decaying atmosphere of the religion. starring Bernardo Bertolucci. For the character design, I explored Masaaki Yuasa’s super flat and distorted style, and Suehiro Maruo’s neoclassical/resin look.
I decided music would be the only acoustic clue to mood, atmosphere and personality development. In Milky Way Prince, music is just as important as silence, so the characters’ verbal communication gradually disappears, and it becomes increasingly difficult to find a solution to a problem. This is an homage to Michelangelo Antonioni’s films about NCDs. The soundtrack is heavily inspired by the classical aesthetic of artists such as Lana Del Rey and the Arctic Monkeys and by the evocative noir atmosphere of Angelo Badalamenti.
I can’t wait to hear what you think of Milky Way Prince, I hope it resonates with you and it stays with you long after playing.
