Posted July 31, 2025 by itsAlaska
I custom built a pixel forest, and watched it die before my eyes. Intentionally and also not.
My goal was for players to think, “Oh, this is just a silly little Vampire Survivors clone where you’re a squirrel in a forest.”
But then... the dream starts to break.
The same enemies return but in darker, corrupted forms.
The trees blacken. The colors drain. A vignette tightens around you. The music shifts.
It’s not just aesthetic, it’s a metaphor. The dream is unraveling. The mind is shutting down.
The final sound (a flatline) isn’t just death. It’s the moment the forest ends.
The idea came from something I’d read about near-death brain activity:
that when someone is dying, the brain releases a surge of chemicals that can trigger vivid, surreal dreams. But as the body fails and those signals fade, the dream decays and dissolves until nothing is left.
So the corruption wasn’t just visual. It was symbolic.
You’re playing as someone in critical condition, dreaming up a whimsical little scenario—a squirrel flinging acorns in a peaceful forest. But as their condition worsens, that dream darkens. The world breaks down. And finally, it ends.
None of this is spelled out directly in the game (thanks, time constraints!), but it was the emotional anchor for everything I built.