A new Ghibli-inspired open-world game is coming next month and it looks beautiful

If you’re a big fan of Studio Ghibli, or find yourself wanting to dive into its worlds while watching the movies, you might want to check out the upcoming game. Towers of Aghasba. Earlier this month, Polygon attended a remote preview, where the developers showed off a pre-recorded look at the game and talked about their inspiration.

The open-world fantasy survival builder game is the first title from Dreamlit Games – with developers having previously worked on everything Hawken Unpleasant Titanfall And Call of Duty2not to mention movies like Independence Day And Ready Player One.

In Towers of Aghasbaplayers take on the role of junior architect for the fictional Shimu people, who were forced to flee their homeland after a mysterious force destroyed it. Now the player must bring the land back to life, restore the flora and fauna and rebuild the villages. Once that’s done, multiplayer is unlocked, where players can explore, trade, hunt and battle with up to three friends.

The original idea for Towers came in 2009, inspired by Minecraft as a sandbox experience where players use resources to build, but also to Shadow of the Colossus for visual inspiration. But the biggest influence, Dreamlit CEO and director Khang Le said in the recorded preview, was the Ghibli film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. “It feels like a place I want to explore and live in,” Le said, after pointing out the film’s large creatures, the strange forest and the teenage princess Nausicaä who collects spores.

Le pushed Towers into the background during development Hawkenwhich was released in 2012. Then, when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released in 2017, he revisited the idea, this time seeing it more as an exploration and building game, inspired by Breath of the wild And Animal Crossing: New Horizonsnext to Viva Piñata And Princess Mononoke for the forestry aspect and attracting creatures.

“For the visual style, the choice was to go with a little more African and Aztec, and ancient cultures like the Jōmon from Japan,” Le said. “I think a tribal fantasy style fits our game mechanics.”

One of the things Le wanted to try Towers used real, hand-painted textures in the game, instead of doing everything digitally. As part of this process he befriended one of Studio Ghibli’s background painting artists, Yoichi Nishikawawho painted some (but not all) of them by hand Towers‘textures with poster colors.

“As a big fan of Ghibli Studio and all their films, it is an honor to be able to have some of these textures where (…) if you look down at your feet or stare at a rock or certain walls, you can see the hand-painted texture on it and it’s quite beautiful.”

The textures aren’t the only analog part of the development process; the map is also handmade, with Le saying during the Q&A portion of the preview that “it’s been a long time coming” and that the team is “still working on it.” Being able to create the terrains by hand was part of the development team’s fun, according to Le, instead of using other traditional tools like procedural generation.

Even if you’re not a fan of Studio Ghibli, it seems like there’s a lot to discover Towers of Aghasba once it releases for early access on November 19 for PC and PS5.