Age of Alchemy: The Goldsmith's Daughter is an NEH Grant-funded mobile adventure game prototype which invites players to take the identity of Viola, a young female alchemy apprentice in early 17th century Northern Europe. Developed by Gossamer Games in partnership with the Science History Institute (the Chemical Heritage Foundation at the time) and Drexel University, it serves as a means to experience the golden age of western alchemy in a fun and unusual way. It is based on the institute's collection of texts, paintings, lab materials and other artifacts.
This project was awarded a prototyping grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the 2018 fiscal year. I assisted in writing the application for the grant by creating and implementing concept art, designing flow charts that outlined the game’s playable story beats from start to finish, and generating several paragraphs of writing that described the game’s setting, storyline, educational value and technological specifications. As is custom with government grants, this is all available to view online on the NEH’s website.
I was the only artist on the development team during the production phase, so my tasks were diverse. I custom modeled, textured, and lit the 3D environments the game takes place in. I created several hand-drawn interactive puzzles to be solved in the game, designed to be reminiscent of alchemical symbolic illustrations found in the Institute’s archives. I also created 2D illustrations of various alchemical tools and ingredients so that they player could use them as a guide in the game. I created 2 fonts from my handwriting - a “fancy” one and a “messy” notetaking one. I also created the logo for the game based on my handwriting.
I accompanied Gossamer Games and representatives from Drexel University on tours of the Science History Institute’s archives to see authentic alchemical tools and paintings in person before being tasked with recreating them digitally. I also was tasked with prepping scans of authentic recipes to be used in the game. The mixtures that the player makes are based on real alchemical recipes from the 17th century.
This environment, based on the Teniers painting below, was mainly used for NEH-application purposes.
"Alchemist in his Workplace", by David Teniers the Younger, ca. 1650.
CG Translation of Environment
A 3D turntable animation of an alembic, an exhaust hood, and various alchemical tools.
THE PROTOTYPE
The environment shown below was used in the prototype outlined in the grant application. It was to serve as a work-in-progress preview of a bigger game, for which additional funding would be sought. For this introductory level, players take on the task of finding Viola’s late mother’s alchemical “Book of Secrets” and using a recipe inside (a real recipe from the Institute’s archives) to create a sleeping draught at an alembic. Players used haptic controls on Android and iOS phones to
I was solely responsible for the creation and implementation of all art seen in the prototype.
The Book of Secrets could be brought up on screen at any time, and was used to provide educational information on alchemical tools to the player. I was responsible for modeling the book and drawing the illustrations in Photoshop; I then created 2D sprites of the illustrations in Unity to be displayed overtop the book pages and give the illusion of being printed onto them.
The book also held 2D illustrated puzzles that revealed alchemical recipes when the right pieces of the image were dragged and dropped appropriately with the phone’s touch controls. Real-life alchemy was a highly competitive field with little regulation, so alchemists would often encode their recipes on paper by way of strange symbolic illustrations. This is a modern day nod to that practice.
1. When a player looks up a new recipe, they will be met with an interactive puzzle. The recipe will be revealed once they solve the puzzle.
3. Once all of the lettuce has been eaten, the player must spin the sun’s outer ring of flames. This will make the clouds rain.
2. Dragging and dropping pieces of the puzzle will begin to solve it. The sun must eat all of the pieces of lettuce, which will make clouds appear.
4. Once all of the clouds rain down and the puzzle is complete, a written copy of the recipe will appear.
Once a recipe has been unlocked in the book of secrets, a player can gather the ingredients and make the recipe at an alembic.
There were several recipes selected for a full-scale production. Here is another illustrated puzzle that was later used for another NEH grant application.
This prototype also featured an example of how a player would navigate social interactions in the game. The choices they made would change Viola’s reputation as an alchemist. In reality, there was little regulation of alchemical practices; some were great doctors of their time, and others were charlatans who frequently changed towns. This system of managing Viola’s reputation throughout the game would show players the different kinds of alchemists that existed and were recorded in paintings and written records that still exist today.
