Concept Drop: The Stairway of Giants
Four thousand steps. Each one taller than a man. A full art dump of the approach to False Heaven.
Today we’re sharing concept art for one of our favorite locations: the Stairway of Giants, the only northern road into False Heaven.
The Lore: The steps are each more than one meter high. All four thousand of them must be climbed. The Whirlpoolian army, already weakened by the desert, lost five days of suffering just to reach the green plateau at the top.
The Design Challenge: How do you make a staircase feel epic? Answer: make every step a choice.
We’ve designed the climb as a vertical level with:
- Siege camps at every 500-step mark, where defenders have fortified positions
- The chasm at the 2,000-step mark, where a narrow bridge is the only way across
- The mage counter-attacks at the 3,000-step mark, where fireballs rain down from above
- The final plateau, where the entire remaining False Heaven population makes its stand
The environment shifts from desert red at the base, through grey stone in the middle, to green moss and waterfall mist at the top. Each step tells the story of the climb.
Early sketches showed a single staircase, but we’ve moved to a design with three parallel staircases — the main approach, a hidden path, and a collapsed section that reveals ancient Ticks technology beneath the stone.
Full gallery in our Discord.
— Art Team