Stories

How moood's games, worlds and scenes were made — with pictures of what changed and broke along the way.

• How it is made — Two weeks of holiday, one person and a team of AI agents: scenes written as programs, people with the movements of living actors, music of its own for every scene.
• The language of mini-games — How mini-games became clear without captions — rings, gestures, a ghost finger, a plate at the top — and how they got their sound: from a C major chord “from super mario” to an organ, a bell and the world’s key. With sounds.
• People, faces, motion — How people with real movements came into drawn scenes: the Kimodo model, “as if made of sticks”, Gemini’s pictures, flat geometry, 52 facial shapes, a camera inside Soloha’s head and faces instead of two dots.
• Why it was slow — Three engines in three weeks: the energy saver, a broken container in Docker, Dikanka at one frame per second, Chrome hung by shaders, “15 years ago, need for speed” and the move to WebGPU.
• How The Chrysalids was made — moood’s first game: from paintings that barely moved to nineteen short films on a new engine — with frames of what broke along the way.
• How The Fall of the House of Usher was made — moood’s second game: twenty-one agents made the first version in one night, then it was moved twice onto new engines — a rider on the horse’s back, mannequin faces, a house that vanished from its own fall.
• Worlds that are not games yet — The scenario is written, the world is drawn, the people stand in their places, waiting to be called into a game. From Tolstoy's blizzard to Abe's sand pit.
• Make your own game — moood is a living scene drawn by code and a page where your code runs on top of it — what it becomes is up to you. What is open, what the studio helps with, and how to get in.
• Six games — Scarlet Sails, Cinema Paradiso, The Elder Son, The Canterville Ghost, The Fisherman and His Soul and Night Flight — how they were made, and how people in them finally got palms.