Finding the Spirit of All Will Rise
By Joost Vervoort, Impact Director
An important part of working on All Will Rise has been discovering what the game needs to be. How do we make an exciting, resonant, wildly interesting experience that expresses what we most want to express as creators?
When we started conceptualizing All Will Rise, we had this simple idea of a climate court case game with the over-the-top and light tone of the Ace Attorney series. But, as the team formed, several key ideas came together in our search for what the ‘spirit’ of the game would be.
We realized we wanted to avoid the trappings of ‘climate activism’ and ‘serious gaming’. It’s a framing that only speaks to a specific group of people and is not that interesting to us either. Because – well, what is really going on here? The billionaires, oligarchs and corporations are taking everything from us. Our planet, our power, our basic needs and securities. Our futures. This is something we should all be angry about. We need the anger and the sadness as fuel for action. And we want to activate this warrior spirit in as many people as possible – because all of us are getting stomped by the powerful.
But we also wanted the game to be deep, seductive, trippy, and full of mystery. This is what we enjoy ourselves in the games we love most dearly – Disco Elysium, Dark Souls, the Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, 1000xResist, Signalis, Citizen Sleeper, Hades and more. Each of them is about engaging with a world that just feels resonant and meaningful.
There’s a real potential for games to engage more with the mystery of what it means to be alive. And touching this sense of mystery is also an important source of strength and energy that inspires people to take up the fight against the powerful.
Finally, we wanted the game to be absurd, sharp and weird. Ace Attorney, if it were about ecological collapse and dead gods. Have the game burst with hilarious moments, weird ideas and conversations.
In short, we wanted to make a game that’s a love letter to everything in life that is worth fighting for.
The result is a game that has a strong spiritual element mixed in with social movement strategizing. The river is a god. Spirit vultures circle the headquarters of Resilience Ventures. Our protagonist Kuyili dissolves herself in the ecstasy of dance. We find that there’s a weird mystical link with a person we only saw as an enemy before. Do we exploit it, or perhaps try for an honest connection?
The humour and sense of extra-ness come out in the game’s writing by Meghna and in the lively art by Yuvraj and Enora. There are so many funny moments hidden in all the choices, in the card battles. Lots of card puns, too. The vibes come through in the aliveness of the cards made by Marocha and in the deep game mechanics brought to life by Hugo.
We showcased our most recent demo at the Dutch indie games festival Indigo last week. And it’s the first time all of the above really came together. The new art. New deep card mechanics. The new writing. We played the demo all day with various people, many of whom played for an hour or more. The game just clicked. IGN Benelux came by, and later wrote about All Will Rise as the most striking and promising game of the event: ‘In fifteen minutes I only got a glimpse of the systems. But that glimpse definitely tasted like more. This is an original, thematically daring game that you really should keep an eye on.’ IGN played our biggest battle so far – Kuyili versus the Resilience Ventures VP Rishabh Rai. They are very well matched. Rishabh can be many things to you, and exploring the unexpected possibilities and conversation twists and turns together was riveting.
In the next months, some big announcements will be coming, so keep an eye on our socials… Now that we’ve found the game’s wild, deep, joyous warrior spirit, we are more confident and excited about the future than ever.
