ESOTERIC (Box art mockup)

A while ago when I was first getting into Illustrator and constantly making all kinds of random stuff in it just for funsies and practice, I made a bunch of generic game title logos. I had some vague concepts in mind for what type of game each one would be. Fantasy RPG, fantasy hack-and-slash, sci-fi FPS, cute mascot platformer that's definitely not haunted.

The last one in this series was a point-and-click puzzle/adventure game in the vein of MYST, but probably more like the other games of the genre that were *inspired* by MYST. Surrealistic, ambiguously sci-fi, pre-rendered worlds with obtuse puzzles seemingly designed solely to frustrate those pretentious gamers who think they're too smart for other games. I liked the title and logo I came up with, so I ended up putting a lot more thought into the concept of ESOTERIC than I did for the others.

I wanted to try making a cover art mockup for it, and actually tried to do so shortly after making the logo, but I was still pretty new to Blender at the time, and I didn't like how it was coming out. Even by the early 2000s CG standards I was aiming for.

But my recent MYST kick (and looking through my Illustrator projects after switching to Inkscape) brought this idea back to the front of my mind, and I knew I'd be able to do it this time.