Concept Art · Game Studios · 2023
Nerve Cathedral
World-building spreads for a game about worshipping machines.
Overview
Hollow Lantern Games needed their machine-cult world to feel ancient on arrival. Nerve Cathedral is fourteen sequential spreads — part art book, part playable lore — showing pilgrims wiring themselves into a gothic server-temple, one station of the cross at a time.
Silver ink on black cotton paper throughout, with gothic-arch compositions borrowed from cathedral floor plans. The studio used the spreads directly as environment briefs, and two made it into the final game as loading-screen murals.
What the project held
- Fourteen sequential world-building spreads
- Silver-on-black gothic compositions for environment briefs
- Pilgrim character studies and machine relic designs
- Two spreads adapted as in-game murals
From the drawing board
“Lore nobody reads is decoration. Lore you walk through is scripture.