First Moon of Mercury

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• Announcements·12 Aug 2026Official

  Dev Diary: Sci-fi Influences

  A video game is made by a team of people. Each person brings their own influences into the game simply because those are their main touchstones of a genre. There may be an official list of influences tucked away in a folder somewhere from when original concept discussions and prototyping happened, but each team member is human and humans each have their own favourites.For this dev diary, we spoke with six team members about their sci-fi influences and how they’ve been incorporated into the game (or in one case, not).Timeline of events leading up to First Moon of Mercury. What are some non-games sci-fi media that has influenced or inspired your work in First Moon of Mercury? Heather Jackson (Narrative): Firefly -- The secrets the crew is keeping from each other is what fascinated me in this show. We have the same thing in First Moon of Mercury. Jeffrey Flores (Art): For the original organic, non-traditional style, the art made for Jodorowsky's Dune was a big inspiration. We wanted to try a look that was unconventional and looked unlike most of what people would think of as spacecrafts. The curves and the arrangements \Dune]  were almost biomechanical, and we wanted to explore forms like that. The other film that influenced me is the recent Transformers One  movie. The overall forms are complex but made up of simpler geometric forms. The world and characters are big, bulky, and industrial, yet maintain flexibility and hint at the underlying mechanics which are characteristics that reflect in our modules. Evan Sawatsky (Art): Sunshine focused on a spacecraft designed to protect Earth from the sun, a very familiar narrative beat to First Moon. The craft that the cast travels on (The Icarus II) blends realistic space station construction (cylindrical capsules, asymmetry, heavy, industrial design) with near-future elements like a massive city block-sized solar shield that protects the craft from the Sun's radiation. The ship's design followed some of what exists in realit...
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• Announcements·14 Jul 2026Official

  Dev Diary: Art Direction Change

  When we created the announcement trailer and Steam page of First Moon of Mercury, we had only been working on the game for a month. Barely anything had been done, but in this uncertain time for games it was crucial that we got the word out about what we were up to. Game announcements are not just about letting players know that a new game is coming out, but are also used to gauge interest for publishers, investors, and government grants. But such an early announcement has its cons. One such con is that things change between that original announcement and the release date.A few things have changed since we made our announcement, but the most obvious one is the art style. This change happened for a variety of reasons, but a big one was because of audience and playtester feedback. So, combined with technical and time limitations, we took that feedback into account and changed things up. We spoke with Art Director Jeffrey Flores, Junior Artist Evan Sawatsky, and 3D Generalist, Lennard about these visual changes. What were the motivations behind changing up the look of the game?Evan: At the end of the day, the decision was made in order to keep the game within a reasonable scope. The art team was a big fan of First Moon's initial visual identity, but unfortunately the time needed to create a game of this scale while adhering to a more organic, less real-world-inspired art style proved to be a major issue. Lennard: Yeah. A lot of the more organic designs were very arduous to model and create, and playtesters had trouble understanding which elements were interactable. Jeffrey: There were many factors. After our initial announcement trailer some feedback was that it was too whimsical in design. While we refined that style during the creation of the first infant station and the Oxygen Garden modules, we found that it was very time consuming to get the curvature of the SDF blending to look right as well as be consistent across artists. When we lost an artist for a handful of ...
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• Announcements·12 Jun 2026Official

  Dev Diary: Designing an Oxygen Garden

  Oxygen is a pretty important element for human life, which was why we designed an oxygen garden for the crew of our space station in First Moon of Mercury. This garden puzzle was one of the first explorations we did as a team for the project.In this Dev Diary, we’re talking to some of the team who designed this station module. Meet Thomas Detko, Game Designer, Programmers Kirsten Sattler and Minh Vu, Art Director Jeffrey Flores, and Evan Sawatsky, Artist.How did you contribute to the oxygen garden?Evan: I modelled the blockout for both the unwrap and configure phases, the first two of three iterations of the configure phase, the maintenance drone asset, the first pass on materials, and created the basic anomalies.Kirsten: I helped build the functionality of the oxygen garden with Minh and Thomas by setting up logic for the various puzzles and interactions, getting navigation working, and implementing art and audio.Jeffrey: I helped with feedback and guidance during modelling.Minh: So, I built the different systems that powered this module and the entire game. Systems such as the quest system, flow system, input system, and focus zone system. I also implemented the actual logic and interactions for the unwrap phase of this module.Thomas: I was in charge of the player flow design and the puzzle design.Early oxygen garden sketches.Why an oxygen garden? Why was this something that had to be in the game?Minh: This is more of a design question but I believe the oxygen garden is one of the biggest modules that we have, where most of the puzzles will live.Thomas: I worked with the narrative person Heather to design a space station whose parts would be at least somewhat related to what an actual space station that is meant to be permanently in space would have. So even though many of our modules might take some design-license to facilitate puzzle design, most of the modules are based on real space station modules.Evan: Without the biosphere of Earth, astronauts either need a...
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• Announcements·29 May 2026Official

  JOIN THE MISSION

  We are at it again! We’re running another bout of playtesting in June and we’d love to have you join us. Help shape the puzzle play of First Moon of Mercury. Important: this is an early build and contains placeholder voice acting (you can thank our devs and family members for lending their voices), little to no UI, and limited sound effects. The narrative elements of gameplay have not been added in-game yet, and won’t be for some time. Filming the volumetric capture with actors is not scheduled until much later in the year.Our focus for this playtest is finding the fun, identifying the friction points, and ensuring there is a balance between ease and challenge within the puzzle play.Get yourself an in-game playtester credit and join the mission: https://first-moon-of-mercury.firstlook.gg/
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• Announcements·13 May 2026Official

  Dev Diary: Audio & Score

  Video games are multi-media projects that bring together various creative and technical disciplines into one place. Audio and music play a major role in games because they help shape the mood and vibe, invoke emotions in players, and are a big factor in user experience in the form of feedback. Players often rely on sound to give them cues, success or failure feedback, and even clues.Today, we’re talking to Eliza Daly and Janal Bechthold about the audio and music in First Moon of Mercury.Tell us a little bit about yourselves and what work you’re doing for First Moon of Mercury.Eliza: Hi! I'm Eliza and I'm the Sound Designer on First Moon of Mercury. I've been working in game audio for around 6 years now and have had a blast working on a variety of different titles across multiple platforms. Every project I work on brings new ideas and challenges, with the current one being tackling the soundscape of First Moon of Mercury!Janal: I’m Janal, the composer for First Moon of Mercury. I’ve worked with Games by Stitch on Rival Books of Aster and Terrorarium, and when I’m not creating music for games I’m scoring films, interactive experiences, and animated series!(A fifteen second sample of Eliza and Janal's work on First Moon of Mercury's sound.)How do your two disciplines work together?Janal: The music and sound departments work together to create a sonic vision for all the audio in the game. When the sound and music are well done they help to set the mood and tone, provide emotional context to the story elements, heighten the action or gameplay intensity, and help the player feel more connected and immersed in the experience.Eliza: Music and sound design go hand in hand so I always want to make sure I'm keeping all aspects of audio in mind whilst I'm designing and mixing. For example, some tonal sounds may need to be in the same key as the music to avoid creating any unwanted dissonance. Most importantly I want to make sure I'm doing Janal's work justice and allow it to sh...
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