Northstar Courier (2022): Concrete, Trees, & Powerlines
Capturing the Photograph in Northstar Courier
By Ben Drury (bluesky, website)
Hi! I’m Ben. I’m more commonly known as “drurylain” online. You most likely know me from my work on the games I've made in collaboration with Feverdream Johnny at Feverdream Softworks. (Orbo’s Odyssey and Nowhere, Mi). While grappling with the myriad projects I've either created or contributed to over the years, I thought it would be fun to discuss my process for designing the environments in my first foray into 3D game design: Northstar Courier.
Northstar Courier was a demo I developed back in 2022 and released as part of the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc. While I initially intended to expand this version of the game into a full release, the overwhelming amount of technical debt, combined with the stress of upcoming university finals, forced me to put development on hold. Now, in 2025, with my skills and tastes having changed and matured, the original demo exists as a time capsule, reflecting a period when I was still getting to grips with 3D game development as a whole. The game is about taking photos of cryptids. While the core “loop” has the player driving around on a scooter in order to carry out deliveries, the primary gameplay involves exploration and light puzzle solving to capture photos of the various unique entities scattered throughout the town.
The rest of this piece will be me rambling as I attempt to put my relationship with photography and architecture into words, along with the methods I used to convey this relationship within the limitations of an older console generation’s art style.
Outside of game development, I spend the majority of my free time as an amateur photographer. The inspiration for the game came to me during one of my photography outings to the Karangahake Gorge. The area is marked by aged concrete and abandoned machinery, slowly being reclaimed by lush greenery and running streams. While at the gorge, I photographed the long-discarded structures that were relics of a time when my country was still at the height of a gold rush. Being in that space and imagining the original purpose of these structures could have been used for is what led to the cryptid collection aspect of the game, which ties into superstitions about old forgotten spaces being haunted by ghosts of the past.
On an additional note, as a fan of mixed media, I thought it would be fun to incorporate my photographs of the gorge into the game itself, and these can be found in the various “postcards” throughout the game, which serve as the title and loading screens.
When creating the main level, I wanted to represent how quickly an environment could change and the effect this has on level design. A constricted, narrow road could, without warning, suddenly open into a vast abandoned mining quarry or a dam. And just as easily, it can constrict into a claustrophobic tunnel that connects to a dense canopy of trees. These environments, in turn, helped inform the types of cryptids that would fill these empty spaces, drawing upon a mix of cultural references (Haast’s eagle), famous cryptid iconography (Flatwoods Monster), and striking images that merged seamlessly with the environment (evil clock tower).
In this process, a number of abstractions were made to properly convey the character of the location while staying within the recognisably “low-poly PS1” art style. To achieve this effect, dense backdrops of varied foliage were condensed into tiling image planes; power lines were stripped of all their complicated machinery and wires, leaving just enough to achieve a recognisable facade; and trees were represented as intersecting square planes. I’ve found that when creating environments, focusing on strong colour composition and clean silhouettes helps capture a specific mood or vibe.
In the end, even without a strong thesis statement, I think it's important for artists to make their art as strikingly personal as humanly possible. Draw from all aspects of your life, go out and notice the small details around you, and think about how they can be incorporated into your art. As it stands, I’m excited to see how Northstar Courier evolves from here, hopefully reflecting more of the person I’ll become and the things I've seen and done since starting.
Also, for those interested in the specs, the images used for the postcards in the demo were captured on a Canon EOS 400D with a Canon EF-S 55-250mm F 4-5.6 IS STM lens. The images used specifically for this piece were captured on a Fujifilm X-T2 with a Sigma 56mm f1.4 DC lens.
My Bounty
For my bounty, I would love a game based on the Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou manga and OVA. While Northstar Courier already borrows many aspects from YKK in aesthetics, nothing has really evoked that same feeling of quiet melancholy and nostalgia, Just existing and letting time pass — other than, like, Boku no Natsuyasumi. Please let me be YKK’s Alpha, I too want to make coffee and ride scooter and play an instrument, please oh god.
Thank you for reading!