Welcome back, Gala Gamers, to the blog series that takes us deep into the creation process of the recently completed Mirandus-Themed Town Star Skins! Today we’ll be looking at Pack 3, but first, let’s go over a few details about what makes these skins so special.

These Skins are Owned Assets

Just like everything you’ll find in the Gala Games store, Mirandus-Themed Town Star Skins are assets that you actually own. That means that when you buy a pack, you’re getting a digital handful of tradable items. You’ve got some serious options, from deploying them in your town for an extra speed and production boost, to selling the skins individually on Opensea.io.

These Skins Give you In-Game Advantages

As you hardcore Town Star players know, competition is fierce in Gala’s flagship game of town and city builders. It’s free to play, but players can give themselves awesome head starts by purchasing or earning various NFT buildings and units. Skins are no exception to this rule. The more skin packs used in your Town Star game, the greater your in-game boost will be, up to a maximum of 25% to worker speed and 10% to craft production time. For more details on these bonuses, check out THIS POST.

These Skins Come with Dragon Vouchers

Each skin pack comes with a 1/10 Dragon Voucher. These vouchers can be resold on Opensea like any of our NFTs, but if you collect them all, then you’ll become the owner of a limited edition Dragon Familiar in Mirandus once the game is released.

Not only will your Dragon Familiar appear beside you like a badge of honor, but it will help you in your adventures, offering in-game benefits and assistance in multiple ways. This ain’t some cute puppy dog that will follow you around and occasionally make obnoxious barking sounds. It’s a Dragon. You know you want one.

Digging into Pack 3

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the units you’ll find in Mirandus-Themed Skin Pack 3. Each of these buildings has been reimagined with an authentic medieval feel to give your town a delightfully quaint Mirandus fantasy charm.

Bakery

Pictured above are the initial sketches presented by the art team. There were clearly some decisions to be made about the doors, windows and roof. Multiple options were colored before the final product was clear.

In the end, a more practical 2-sided roof was chosen as the final. The 4-sided roof seemed a bit unnecessary and complex for a Bakery. Notice how all examples utilize the striped pattern that is recognizable from the modern Bakery building.

Next up for reimagining was the Baker character who does all the hard work. Ironically, in the original image she carries a cake, but in the game she does not actually bake cakes. Instead, that is reserved for the pastry chef that comes with the Cakery. First, the Baker was presented in several options for authentic Middle Ages garb.

She looks a bit more cheerful in blue, don’t you think? Icing or no icing, that cake looks delicious!

Express Depot

The Express Depot is a quicker trade NFT that is awarded to members of Gala Gold. With its awesome flames and larger-than-life driver, this thing looks like it gets goods from point A to point B with unmatched speed. It was initially decided to use an ox for this kind of fast transporting in the Middle Ages, but there were still some details to nail down, mostly about the style of the wagon and the size of the ox.

Art Director Warren Marshall opted for the stronger looking ox to signify additional speed and power. Notice how its back muscles are bulging and its horns are longer than the other options. You wouldn’t want to be trapped in a stampede with that bad boy. Next up was the Express Depot Driver character.

If anyone could control that ox, it would be this guy. No riding crop is necessary. As long as he’s got a full wineskin, he’s good to go. The ox is the designated driver anyway.

Feed Mill

The Feed Mill was pretty simple to redesign into the Mirandus theme, but even the simplest units typically have a few options to choose from. This is the level of detailed planning that goes into every single visual asset created by Gala Games.

The first model was chosen simply because it looks more old fashioned. It is far more likely that a rancher in the Middle Ages would have used a mill made of stone and wood than metal.

Trough

Other than a bit of rustic wood treatment, the trough is essentially the same. From the Middle Ages until today, not much has changed about an open-top wooden box for storing feed. Some of today’s troughs may have fancy lids or other manners of protection from the elements that ensure longer freshness for the feed. Cows and sheep just aren’t that picky about where they get their food. Luckily, this simple skin unit (like all the others) will still count toward your in-game speed and production bonus.

Water Tower

Once upon a time, Town Star Water Towers were a place for extra water to be stored rather than being wasted. Player feedback eventually showed that most were not finding this type of Water Tower very useful, so the Water Tower went away for awhile. It then reappeared around the time of May Mayhem earlier this year with a new function, similar to that of the Fountains.

Now you can get a Water Tower in any one of 4 rarities: Uncommon, Rare, Epic and Legendary. Each Water Tower provides varying degrees of passive water to surrounding fields. While each of the 4 rarities have a different look, only 1 final Water Tower skin image was created. It started with two main options, pictured below.

It was decided to use a combination of the two, using the drop of water banner from #2 with the brown wooden construction and open top of #1.