Zellige: The Tilemaker of Granada

Zellige: The Tilemaker of Granada is my first commercially released indie project. Available on PC and Mac through Steam, it represents the culmination of two years of work.

An expansion of an earlier project (now renamed Zellige: Prototype) this is a relaxing, meditative mosaic-making game, set in medieval al-Andalus. Explore an Andalusian palace, create intricate mosaics, and leave your mark on the world around you!

I'm proud of the talented team I built and led for this project. It was articulated around a core trio composed of myself, as creative lead, designer, and programmer, Afnan Linjawi, as scriptwriter and marketer, and Jean de Wilde d'Estmael, as producer.

Our collaborators included composer Mathilde Koechlin, sound designer Samuel Morris, environment modeller Sharleen Ramos, UI / UX designer Sophie Artemigi, character designer Jo-Dee Longstaff, artist Owein Pourre, poster and marketing artist Rizky Soraya, 3D prop modellers Farooq Dehlvi and Sunna Sól Sigurðardóttir, Arabic translator Rafif Kalantan, and Persian translator Pantea Jannatkhah.

Zellige began as the final year project for my Master's course, and I wanted to bring into it as much as I could from the things I had learned over the previous year. After graduating, I continued refining the project for another year, preparing it for commercial release.

The game doesn't just expand on the first Zellige's design interface, it also places it in the context of an actual narrative and of a physical space, as opposed to its predecessor's pared down "virtual toy" approach.

The design interface in this iteration is much more refined, giving players greater freedom and guiding them closer to the traditional techniques for common designs in Islamic geometric art. For example, greater emphasis is placed on the creation of temporary lines that do not form part of the final design but are used as anchor points for drawing the final lines.

Framing these design mechanics is a gentle story of a merchant family in 14th century al-Andalus, who, in preparation for their daughter's wedding, hire a tilemaker to design the mosaics for their palace. The player is given access to a codex containing several historical designs from across the Islamic world, with steps to recreate them and information on their origins.

The family's palace is heavily inspired by a real Granadan house from that era, the Palace of Dar al-Horra, and in the game's case, was designed to be a sort of "best-of" of Andalusian architecture and interior design, as it existed under the reign of Muhammad V of the Nasrid Dynasty.

Zellige was released in February 2023 to positive reviews, both on Steam and in the press. A personal highlight was the glowing review written by Rock Paper Shotgun's Sin Vega, who described Zellige as "a game about creating art that felt effortless even as I put in a lot of effort", "humble but delightful" and a "quietly beautiful little game".