I'm going to put some little tid-bits about the game's development in here including rants about my own concerns and the issues surrounding it all. Also some fun little pieces about where I get the ideas for certain plot points.

Melissa's Swing
I'll start here because this isn't of major not but I actually came up with this phase title first and the character was named after it, not the other way around. This is a real thing that exists in the world, I just mercilessly plugged it into my game because I liked it.

When I was a lot younger there was a place in England we used to go on holiday called the Forest of Dean. It was a huge wooded area with any number of walks and campsites. One particular walk of note was called the Sculpture Trail. It was my favourite place to go as a kid because I had some level of morbid fascination with it. It scared me a little bit and things that scared me as a kid I tended to gravitate towards more.

In a section of the woodland they had a bunch of artists erect sculptures and installations. These were spread over miles and you went to the site, got a pamphlet and a map and set off to complete a long walk through the woodlands, looking at the sculptures as you went. They were very strange and conceptual things. Not just statues or obvious things. They were very very strange and abstract. There was one installation which fell due to the effects of weathering called the seasons that was an area of woodland set to take on the appearance of four different seasons with the plant life and undergrowth.

Another example is that at the start of the trail was a fifty foot wooden chair made from just logs, and a bunch of metal wire deer that somebody had put into a lake. Sometimes they'd be "reclaimed by the forest" and removed from the trail so they wouldn't appear on the pamphlet due to weathering. They just left them there to rot. So you'd bump into something if you went off the trail that was an abstract but dying remain of some artist's work. It was kind of a haunting experience going around it.

But by far one of the most memorable was the swing which used to be at the start of the trail (they moved it later). It was called Melissa's Swing because the artist had a daughter called Melissa. It used to be on top of a very steep hill and it was covered in chimes so when it blew or swung it made a sort of melodic chorus. Very haunting and very peculiar. Just this swing out in the middle of dense woodland with nothing around for miles. It always fascinated me.

They moved it off the hill eventually due to health and safety concerns. It was pretty dangerous tbh. We used to sit on it and swing as kids and it never felt particularly safe. I think it's still there to this day but in a less precarious location. Either way I liked it and wanted to shove it into something I wrote one day. This seemed like a good opportunity so I mercilessly stole it. Still art is meant to inspire and it certainly did that (:

http://www.forestofdean-sculpture.org.uk/sculptures/current/melissas-swing/

It's quite a fascinating collection. Some of the designs are pretty strange. Well worth a look if things like that intrigue you.

Incidentally, the many different languages repeating the word "Silence" on the dome in lab 2 where Group F got annhialated came from this piece.

http://www.forestofdean-sculpture.org.uk/sculptures/current/grove-of-silence/

A lot of it is fairly inspiring.