Designing Cities Dreamy and Mundane

Designing Cities Dreamy and Mundane

By Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Dream City Knights takes place in a setting defined by its duality, and focused on its two cities. Sunrise Falls is situated in Colorado, USA, or, well, our version thereof, whereas the Dream City exists on an entirely different plane. Sunrise Falls was imagined as very concrete, and almost mundane in its extravagant physicality, when the Dream City was intended to encapsulate an impossible version of urbanism; one shaped by the dreams of countless humans. 

It was obvious to us that the two places had to feel radically different to each other, while retaining some subtle – almost hidden – similarities. We wanted to juxtapose the drudgery of suburbia to the often dangerous wonders of a dream-fuelled metropolis. We wanted two places that would work together with Dream City Knight’s mechanics to help bring forth the duality of the offered gaming experience. 

Sunrise Falls 

Even though both cities were conceptualised more or less in parallel, it was Sunrise Falls that was the first to be given concrete form, and the first to be detailed. This imaginary, small, 1990s city would be set somewhere in Colorado, allowing us to not only take advantage of the state’s stunning natural vistas, but providing us with a relatively isolated location too. Such a place also gave us the suburban imagery required for the game’s atmosphere, and visual style. Bicycles, arcades, repurposed garages, pastoral cul-de-sacs, and skateparks are all elements found in our inspirations – books like It, movies like Dazed and Confused or video games like Knights and Bikes – and are nicely juxtaposed to the oppressive mood we are aiming for.

Sunrise Falls, however, will neither merely serve as a backdrop for the otherworldly adolescent adventures of the player characters, nor as a glorified functional hub. Our players are going to spend a lot of time there, and this meant we needed a town that would feel properly mundane and unspectacular at first, but would also suck players in and be memorable and intriguing. The mundanity of Sunrise Falls is skin-deep; the place is steeped in history, and packed with little surprises, fascinating people, beautiful spots, unexpected drama, mysteries, strong characterful touches, and even danger.

Another design demand was that of authenticity. We wanted the city to feel real and complex. It had to be realistic in its form and structure, make sense socially and financially, and allow us to provide players with recognizable locales and familiar images. As all cities it had to be dynamic and ever evolving too. As for its landmarks and entertainments they are all meant to nod to the popular conceptions of the 1980s and 1990s. 

After several iterations, and before artist Moreno Paissan worked on it, this is what the town map looked like:

Roughly 50,000 people live here, and this gave us the scale for Sunrise Falls; a scale that can handily be mapped in a way that can fit both in a TTRPG book, and in the players’ minds. Interestingly the town’s name came up later during development, but, as all good names do, influenced our geography. Mostly by cementing the existence of the lake, and by introducing waterfalls. 

The Dream City

Unlike the straight lines of Sunrise Falls’ roads, the vortex-inspired curves of the Dream City were never meant to evoke urbanity (or represent roads). They were chosen to contradict our city map expectations, just as the city itself was designed to negate many of the fundamentals of urbanism and architecture. The form of the Dream City is derived from functions that are alien to the physical world, and its structure represents and expresses this unusual reality. 

What’s more, the Dream City’s urban structure didn’t simply need to feel otherworldly and dreamy. It had to resemble a city too; this is a fundamentally different city, but still a city. Elements such as the strong centre, the Tower district, were designed to mimic recognizable and deeply familiar notions of urbanity. The surrounding Primordial Wilds and their dream-shaped flora, on the other hand, definitely made for an unexpected take on a wider downtown. 

I will not be getting into the details of every district here, but you can have a look at one of the early structural drafts of the Dream City below, and hopefully agree that it simultaneously looks and doesn’t look like a city.

When it comes to the distinct areas themselves, players obviously shouldn’t expect industrial blocks, logistics centres, highways, old towns or central business districts here. Moving between the Arched Haven and the Shapes does not involve taking the bus, whereas the Cul-de-sac Garden Oasis and the Mall of Shifting Realms are more metaphorical in their naming than one would expect them to.

To create such a place, one that would be able to accommodate odd scenes and impossible spaces, as well as one that would allow for ethereal architectures combining the physical with the unreal, we too had to fuse the literary with the real. Our inspirations spread to span everything from the architecture of Gaudi and the wild buildings of Hundertwasser, to Clarke’s Piranesi, the art of Beksiński, and the stunning and quite magical Codex Seraphinianus.