I am more comfortable with JS + Three + Web than Unity/Unreal, and we had planned this as a web first experience. I also wanted a lot more control over the application than what those engines support (eg - in terms of loading, mobile, asset management, DOM-based UI, etc).

In hindsight some things would have been a lot easier with a game engine!

Thanks! We used ThreeJS and JavaScript for the engine, and Svelte for the UI.

We started the project with a small team, just myself (concept/code/design), Tiffany Beucher (illustration, character design and concept art), Guillaume Le Roux (modelling, animation and art direction), and production by the NFB.

As the project grew we brought others to help with different parts. You can find the full credits below:

https://www.nfb.ca/interactive/wayfinder

It was coded with JavaScript + ThreeJS and built on top of a custom entity component system. Lots of different parts to the game, each receiving different treatments; eg the terrain is built from a mix of voronoi cells, layered simplex noise, and poisson disc sampling.

I found Amit Patel’s blog to be a great resource for this:

https://www.redblobgames.com/

Thanks! Lots of things inspire me - Journey and Flower are obvious references, but also many other projects! I find a lot of inspiration through online illustration and generative art communities.