I’m not gonna sugar coat it…

If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be making a game about immortal peacekeepers, ideologies, and conflict, I wouldn’t have laughed or called you crazy or anything like that. I would’ve probably said “Sure, why not.” As professional and fleshed out as the game and even this website is, you’d think this was all done and developed for years.

But quite the opposite.

This was a game that I, Tobi made for my Final Major Project, but what was meant to be something that just got me by, turned into a game that I became extremely passionate about.

There’s a lot of conflict in the world, especially right now at the time I’m writing this (Hopefully it’s gotten better in the future?🍉) and while I was thinking on it all, the very idea of conflict and the roles it plays in movies, games and the like, I realised that there’s something powerful in struggle…

At first, I was just chasing aesthetics, but as I kept designing, something began to emerge. A tension. A question.

What happens when what you stood for, no longer cuts it?

What if pacifism in the face of adversity was more just self-righteousness rather than noble or anything to be proud of?

That led me to create the Zothari (Or the Trippan People, formerly). A race that mastered peace by eliminating conflict. Eternal, wise, respected, all that. But then, after a mysterious and tragic event claims the lives of many of them, they are forced, over hundreds of years to reform and become warriors to fight back.

See where this is going?

Pacifists, FORCED to fight. Then came Ka’Sipho, our protagonist, the boy who looked young but had lived for centuries, numb from the inside out. The event that had pushed the Zothari to nigh extinction had taken so much from him, but still, he didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to lead. He didn’t want to WEAR THE MASK (More on that in another post). That apathy became the foundation of his journey—one that mirrored my own creative process. That slow push from passivity into action. From silence into voice.

That’s when Strife & Serenity took shape.

So no, this DEFINITELY wasn’t a sudden flash of brilliance. It was built. Slowly. Messily. From scraps of ideas and late-night doubts. From lectures on game design, stories I loved, and real-world questions I couldn’t stop thinking about.

But I’m glad I kept moving forward (please appreciate that reference… pls). Because somewhere in that messy middle, I found something that felt honest. Not only that, but a game and a story worth continuing…