Here’s some of the line art for Skazka’s birch forest backgrounds to test style and tiling. The forest’s make-up is primarily birch and aspen with some alder and larch. As the game moves into “deep forest” (i.e. the taiga), coniferous trees begin to dominate.
Fun fact: the taiga is the world’s largest land biome, spanning both the Eurasian and North American continents.
I haven’t talked too much about Volk, Katya’s wolf companion in Skazka, because I did the thing I always complain about in games with two-players — one of them gets relegated to “Player 2.” Player 2 is tacked on. Player 2 is unloved. Player 2 is either the same as (or less than) Player 1.
The mount feature is a key part of the cooperative aspect of Skazka. It provides straight up advantages to both players — Volk runs faster, Katya hit harder, and both characters take less damage — and it functions much like a vehicle segment in other games (driver/shooter combo with Volk’s player at the wheel and Katya’s player at the turret).
