Hello! This is JINO, the developer of Goodbye Seoul.
In this dev note, I’d like to talk about the “temperature” of space — the feeling players experience when they first step into a fictional world. I want to briefly share some of the thoughts behind filling the screen with traces of human warmth, and how I’m trying to bring that into the game.
Sometimes, even when we see a virtual world that perfectly recreates reality, it can still feel strangely lifeless and unfamiliar. We can feel the same way looking at photographs or videos of real places, and sometimes even in actual physical spaces themselves.
There can be many reasons for this, but I believe one of the biggest is the absence of “human traces.” No matter how faithfully reality is recreated or how accurately a place is brought into a fictional world, if all signs of human presence are erased, the result can feel cold and lifeless — nothing more than empty graphics.
A crooked piece of graffiti someone left on a wall, the worn signboard of an old shop, the small emotions embedded into the streets by countless strangers… These scattered fragments of memory and human presence come together to create the “temperature” of a space.
The city in Goodbye Seoul is, ultimately, a fictional world made of polygons and pixels. But I never wanted it to feel like a simple stage set. I wanted it to feel like a place where people once truly lived — where they breathed, loved, and left pieces of themselves behind.
To achieve that, I’ve been filling the city with small, deeply human traces to give it life. Throughout the world, I’ve carefully planted tiny fragments of humanity — details that allow players to project their own emotions onto the space.
As players walk through these streets, I want them to wonder: “Who used to live here?” or “Who left this message on the wall?” When the player’s imagination begins filling in those invisible stories, the fictional world finally starts to breathe like a real place.
While observing and collecting traces of people from real cities and translating them into this fictional world, I suddenly had a thought: “What if real players could directly participate in this process as well?”
I wanted the city to become more than a world filled only by the developer’s hands — I wanted your stories to become part of the scenery itself.
With that idea in mind, I offered a “Design Participation Reward” through our crowdfunding campaign, allowing supporters to leave their own traces within the game world. To make sure overseas players and those unable to participate in the crowdfunding could still join the process, I also gathered ideas through a Discord event.
Since we have not yet fully begun collecting data from crowdfunding participants, this time I first focused on implementing the ideas gathered through the Discord event into the game.
The funny phrases, meaningful messages, and unique image data you sent were all carefully reworked to match Goodbye Seoul’s distinct art style. These contributions were redesigned into rough graffiti, spray-painted markings, and other environmental details, then naturally integrated throughout Itaewon’s back alleys and along the protagonist Rayeon’s journey.
The traces you left behind blend into the world itself, adding unexpected warmth and an uncanny sense of realism to the bleak streets Rayeon passes through. I hope the idea that your own message now exists somewhere within a collapsing Seoul can bring a stronger sense of life to the city than even the most detailed visual depiction ever could — and make this world feel even more personal and meaningful to you as well.
In the end, however, Goodbye Seoul is still a game. I may have built the framework and the world itself, and together with some of our players left traces throughout its streets, but this is still only part of the process.
What truly brings warmth into this fictional space — what ultimately completes the game — is all of you who will one day walk these streets yourselves.
Goodbye Seoul is completed through your experience, and it will continue to stay alive through your ongoing support and affection. I sincerely want to thank everyone helping create this world together with me.
In the next dev note, I’ll be sharing more concrete examples of how ideas from actual crowdfunding participants were implemented into the game, along with detailed design results. Please look forward to seeing how your own traces have made Goodbye Seoul’s world even richer.
Thank you.
— JINO
"All contents of this developer note are subject to change depending on development progress."