Canvas City: A Game of Rebellion, Art, and Community
Canvas City is a vibrant and visually stunning game that captures the essence of rebellion through the lens of skateboarding and street art. It follows a group of skaters who use their skills to fight against an oppressive regime, turning battlegrounds into canvases for their message. The game emphasizes teamwork and collective action, reflecting the collaborative spirit of its development team.
Disc 2 Games, based in New Zealand, is the studio behind this upcoming title. However, they are not working alone. The wider Black Salt Games team is also involved, as part of a cross-studio collaboration that brings together diverse talents and expertise.
A Deep Relationship Between Disc 2 Games and Black Salt Games
Notably, Disc 2 Games was formed under the Black Salt Games banner following the success of Dredge, an eldritch horror fishing game released in 2023. This game was both critically and commercially successful, leading to the creation of Disc 2 Games as a separate studio with its own unique identity and inspiration rooted in brightness, color, and 90s retro aesthetics.
Despite being separate entities, there remains a strong connection between the two studios. Developers share talent, knowledge, and advice, creating a supportive environment for growth and innovation.
‘After Black Salt Games did really well with Dredge, rather than expanding that team and making a bigger team, what we decided to do was make a bunch of smaller satellite studios under an umbrella called Saltwork Studios,’ said Michael Bastiaens, a 3D Artist on Canvas City and developer at Black Salt Games.
This setup allows for resource sharing, including QA teams, marketing personnel, and other essential roles. It also facilitates the exchange of experiences and lessons learned from previous projects, such as Dredge.
The collaboration extends beyond just resources. It fosters a sense of community among New Zealand-based game developers, particularly in the Epic Innovation building in Christchurch. This hub encourages the sharing of knowledge and the development of skills across various studios.
Building a World of Rebels and Rollerblading
For the Disc 2 Games team, this collaborative approach has enabled a knowledge-led development process, allowing for a more ambitious scope for Canvas City. Developers Kris Nicholson, Technical Director and Lead Programmer, and Johannes Otte, Creative Director and Lead Artist, have been making games for years.
Nicholson began his career around 2011 at Stickmen Studios in New Zealand, before moving on to sister studio CerebralFix. Otte started making games around the age of 13, experimenting with Adobe Flash Player and Newgrounds to explore the possibilities of game design.
Otte shared, ‘I discovered very quickly at that age that my art was real bad, so [improving] that became the focus. Then all I did was art.’
Harnessing these skills, he eventually got his first job in Japan doing art on the marketing side, as well as for some games. Eventually, he returned to New Zealand and spent time at CerebralFix.
Now, both developers are working together on Canvas City, alongside Producer Nadia Thorne, and the wider team at Black Salt Games.
The Idea Behind Canvas City
The idea for Canvas City emerged from a lengthy pitching process, which included rapidfire ideas for around 20 different games that could potentially progress to the prototype stage. The initial concept for this strategy RPG, with its pop art style and frenetic pace, started as a criticism of the strategy RPG genre – that it typically focused on military skirmishes.
‘I really like turn-based tactics games, but they’re all very military-focussed, and that … is just not what everyone is into,’ Otte said.
He believes that turn-based strategy games have the potential to appeal to a wide audience, citing the massive success of games like Baldur’s Gate 3. He wanted to create a turn-based strategy game that would be more appealing to a broader audience, drawing inspiration from games like Jet Set Radio and more energetic, happier-style games.
Elements of Jet Set Radio’s street art-inspired style also made it into Canvas City, as Otte and the team were interested in exploring movement and mechanics in a turn-based format, and how traditional ‘military style’ strategy games could be reimagined with a lighter, more artful touch.
Starting from Scratch
With the outline for Canvas City and its intentionality nailed down, the Disc 2 Games team set about working on a prototype that would begin an experimentation with combat and style. The initial pitch didn’t really look at any specific game in the genre. The initial prototype was basic, focusing on translating movement into a turn-based system and exploring how movement would fuel attacks.
From there, it felt like a more collaborative process of how they then iterated, where everyone played different games in the team and had different kinds of reference points. They would play the game, play test it, get feedback from people, then as a team, bring their collective influences to shape it.
Michael Bastiaens noted that the closeness of other studios has been a major boon for work on Canvas City, as it’s ‘really easy’ to get other people in to playtest and give feedback. It was also essential for iteration, as the team worked out the best ways to innovate on strategy RPG gameplay – including figuring out how a rollerblading movement system could aid speed and style.
Recently, Disc 2 Games was also able to gather feedback at BitSummit in Japan. Bastiaens said, ‘We saw a lot of people playing through the game there, and they’re wild and everything. And then [it was] realising “okay, yeah, people don’t quite get this, so let’s try to make that a bit more clear”. There’s going to be more iterations right until the end, until we’ve got something that really feels like it’s working.’
A Reflection of Teamwork and Community
Canvas City is a reflection of this team-based approach. It’s a game all about the power of the people, working together to take down an oppressive force, using the medium of art. Disc 2 Games, working alongside Black Salt Games and their fellow game developer community, is also fighting a battle here, with art as their method of communication.
Intentional or not, the parallels are sweet. It reveals so much about how this facet of New Zealand’s tight-knit games community continues to work together to create such cool, new, and exciting video games.
With a string of hits in recent years, Canvas City is currently gearing up to make its own splash in the New Zealand games scene, and on the global stage, in the near future.
Canvas City is set to launch for PC, and does not currently have a firm release date.
