Inspirations

The Wheel of Time (The Ways)

The waygates and traveling via the ways in the Wheel of Time feature prominently in my mind for their very "isolating" sort of imagery. They "feel" the perfect setting for a roguelite or even to be the sort of traverse one would travel in a game like Diablo or Path of Exile. Shadesmar in Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings bears mention here. The perpetual night with sourceless ambient light, a bottomless drop off the edge, ancient infrastructure without known source. This is the basis for the plot of the game. I want to wander "the ways" as if they exist in a retro game universe.

John Carter of Mars 

The Disney film is great. It has a couple of false endings. Some of the human characters seem a little flat or poorly acted, but on the whole, prior to The Mandalorian, it was some of the best non-anime cowboy sci-fi to come out since Firefly.

Sunward

Beautiful mood piece. Combines a hand-painted art style and minimal environmental aspects to create an ambient experience with a subtle mythic quality. Simple and beautiful. https://graebor.itch.io/sunward

[Forgotten Title]

The game consists of the character and the bridges. It's a simple puzzle/exploration/walking simulator from a top-down perspective. The goal to get from one point to the next, and only consisting of a single level. The world outside the journey is, as it were, non-existent. Mario kart's Star Road.

Hyper Light Drifter

Who can forget Teddy Dief's presentation about the last few hours of dev at GDC? Sublime environmental storytelling integrated with a "gameplay first" set of mechanics. Beautiful use of limited detail artwork. Heart Machine knocked this one out of the park. 

Mistborn

In spite of some valid criticisms Sanderson himself has levied against these books, the tone tends to capture some more of the dark foreboding I'm interested in representing. 

The Wind Waker

The Wind Waker defined action RPG for me in the early 2000s. I had always been a fan of the original Legend of Zelda when I first played it, but never could fully get behind the polygonal art of the Ocarina games. The Wind Waker's interface and interactions created some of the best game-feel in a third person 3D Adventure I had seen to date. Puzzles, Collisions, Storytelling, the sense of open-world exploration, less hand-holding, and general gameplay still make this rank almost as high as Breath of the Wild in Zelda classics. I like the isolated islands, each with their own objectives/stories to tell/contribute to the overarching narrative.