No Rest for the Wicked: the spectacular evolution of Moon Studios' graphics tech

No Rest for the Wicked is out now on early access, giving us our first glimpse at Moon Studios' latest project. The developer's prior offering - Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and The Will of the Wisps - turned the Metroidvania style of game on its head, offering a powerful, fresh experience that is difficult to forget. And now, four years later, Moon looks set to do the same for action RPGs with No Rest for the Wicked.

However, making an isometric game brings with it some serious challenges. For example, how do you convey a sense of scale to the player while retaining visibility? This is one of the key features that the tech team at Moon focused on and the selected path is what it call sthe 'curved world'. Inspired by Animal Crossing, the idea is that the entire 3D map is curved away from the player. By doing so, it becomes possible to see further into the distance.

The point is that the sheer amount of motion on display brings the world to life in a way that I found very impressive. It feels just as lively as the 2D Ori games yet manages to do all of this in full 3D at a larger scale while being significantly more interactive. What's interesting is that, with Wicked being in early access, the team is still working on additional effects that aren't currently in the game. For instance, Moon is experimenting with actual dynamic streams of water.

As for performance, it's still early days but the impression thus far is that Wicked is significantly heavier than the Ori games and there is still work to be done. I tested it on my main PC with a Core i9 12900k and RTX 4090 but I also tested it on an older Core i9 9900k system with an RTX 2060 Super, a Core i7 12800H laptop with a 3080 Ti laptop GPU - and even the Steam Deck.

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