Hi everyone,
After a nice break over the holidays, we’re back to work on Adventure Craft for 2026. Right before I stepped away, I was right at the start of a final art pass on the underground cave system. This pass is all about polish — adding those last details that help the caves feel more grounded, more ancient, and more visual variation to enhance exploring.
Once that’s wrapped up, my focus will shift back above ground to the world beyond the Player Spawn Area, where a lot of content has been building up in the background and is ready to start coming together.
Right now, I’m adding a collection of static environmental props that have a much lower chance of generating than the standard cave assets. These are meant to feel rare — the kind of things you stumble across occasionally and immediately recognize as something special. Some of these props may also act as spawn points for certain rare monsters, but everything here is still very much a work in progress.
To build these assets, I’m using a modular approach. I create small sets of pieces that share a theme, then combine them into a brush palette that lets me quickly build up larger structures while still keeping things varied. This makes it much easier to experiment with layouts and density without everything feeling copy-pasted.
In the image above, you can see examples of these themed sets: ancient mechanical relics and equipment half-buried in rock, stone portals that hint at forgotten systems or locations, and clusters of debris scattered naturally through the cave environment. These pieces are designed to break up the rock formations, suggest history, and create visual landmarks that make different cave areas feel distinct.
All of this is about making the underground feel like a place with a past — something that existed long before the player ever arrived.
This set leans into contrast — old, forgotten machinery mixed with more unsettling environmental details. The mechanical pieces are clearly artificial, but heavily worn and partially consumed by the cave. They’re meant to feel like remnants of something that once functioned down here, long before the caves became what they are now.
The skull piles push things in a darker direction. Small, numerous, and deliberately excessive, they suggest repetition over time rather than a single event. Something lived here, hunted here, or was brought here again and again. The scale stays ambiguous, but the volume makes them hard to ignore.
These assets are designed to work both on their own and as clustered formations. Some appear exposed and obvious, others are embedded directly into the surrounding rock so they blend into the cave more naturally. This gives the generator flexibility to place them in ways that feel intentional rather than decorative.
The goal is simple: quiet environmental storytelling that adds tension, history, and a sense that something about this place isn’t right.
These structures are designed to feel deliberate, ritualistic, and old. Circular stone platforms suggest gathering points or sites of importance, while the carved stone faces lean into something more symbolic — watching, judging, or marking territory. They’re not decorative ruins, they’re placed with intent.
These ruins aren’t meant to explain themselves. They exist to raise questions, create landmarks, and suggest that the caves weren’t always empty — and that whatever shaped them left its mark behind. Are they guardians, warnings, or remnants of whatever once controlled these spaces?
These structures feel older than the surrounding caves — not just abandoned, but embedded into the environment. The rock has grown up around them, partially burying their bases and softening their shapes over time. Whatever they were built for, they weren’t meant to be temporary.
These ruins feel ceremonial rather than structural. The pillars are snapped, worn down, and uneven, but the bones placed on top feel deliberate — added long after the stone itself had already fallen into decay. Whatever this place was, it didn’t simply collapse and get forgotten.
This set mixes heavy, deliberate structures with smaller organic details. The stone coffins and oversized swords feel ceremonial — oversized, impractical, and clearly symbolic. They suggest burials, guardians, or monuments to something far larger than the player
These clustered canisters feel manufactured and intentional, standing out immediately against the natural cave rock. They’re grouped rather than scattered, suggesting storage, containment, or some kind of process that required repetition and scale. Whatever they held, it mattered enough to build infrastructure around it.
All of these pieces are part of a larger effort to make the underground feel intentional — not just a place full of enemies and resources, but a space with history, purpose, and unanswered questions. The caves aren’t meant to explain themselves outright. They’re meant to be read, explored, and slowly understood over time.
This final art pass is about reinforcing that feeling — adding landmarks, rare moments, and subtle storytelling that reward players who slow down and pay attention. There’s still more to come, but this work lays the foundation for everything that happens beneath the surface.
Thanks for following along, and as always, more updates soon. -James
Twitter: @iENDERi