[That Cult Game] Style Guide

[That Cult Game] is a game of how religions er, CULTS operate as a virus on the globe with some tongue-in-cheek religion is the root of all evil.

GOAL:
The player’s goal is to bring about and/or survive the End of Days (aka “win”), an apocalyptic event that destroys all life on Earth.

MECHANISM:
The player manages a cult by making decisions, grows the cult in health, wealth and size. The player’s actions gives hints on how the End of Days (the apocalypse, ragnarok, the big global warming dirtnap) will occur, and what they can do to fend it off/bring it around.

The artwork for [That Cult Game] is the identifying image for the player: the cult leader. Since the player can make their own cult leader, with their own cult “flava”, we want the player to choose a head and a gender of the cult leader. The figures will have standardized shapes so that they are interchangeable (like pin-up doll dresses, etc.), the same clothes match all head choices.

Based on decisions in the game, the image will change based on cult attributes (or “cultributes”) that the cult focusses on. The cultributes are
- Gender: what is the bias of men to women?
- Philanthopy: how kind-hearted is the cult?
- Greed: is the cult money based (aka Tony Robbins)?
- Machievellian: how power-hungry is the cult?
- Xenophobic: how much does the cult hate and fear others?
- Luddite: does the cult endorse technology?

I expect other “cultributes” to be created over time (the game is open ended) but these are the primary five. Cultributes measures will map to attributes on the figure, such as Greed could map to the left hand of the figure and if the cultists are extremely greedy, the left hand would hold an offering plate with a large dollar bill (or a bunch of money, or gold and jewels - the artist is welcome to propose iconography).

So what is the artwork supposed to do?
0) Serve as black humor: Hajibs, ninja masks, tattoos, preistly robes, suicide vests, a bevy little children to abuse - there’s nothing good as a sick joke.
1) Depict the cult leader as primary player identification
2) Will reflect the cult’s origin (how the cult originated)
3) Will reflect the cult leader’s gender (chosen by the player)
4) Will reflect the results of the cult leader’s choices

Graphic restrictions:
Strict black and white graphic (2 color), expected on a white background. Would prefer vector drawing, but will work with whatever works.
Agreed upon layering effect so that pieces of the “cult leader” image will fit together correctly.
Size of the files must be restrictive.
Due to requirements above, designing for spotty graphics

Things I’ll probably have to do:
Create an “import” tool for the artist to test out their art for quality assurance.