The sand finally looks like sand

Short one this time, and it’s all about a single thing I couldn’t stop looking at: the floor.

The old substrate was flat. Not bad, exactly — it read as sand from across the room — but the moment you actually looked at it, the illusion fell apart. It was a texture laid down flat, with no sense that light was hitting it or that anything was casting shadow onto it. The tank sat on top of the scene instead of in it.

So this pass was about grounding everything. New sand that actually catches the light, gradients where the substrate meets the glass, and shading under the hardscape and plants so they look like they’re resting on the floor rather than floating a pixel above it. The light that filters down from the surface now lands on the sand and pools, instead of just being a decoration up top.

It’s the kind of change that’s hard to point at in a screenshot and easy to feel once you’re in it. The whole tank reads as one space now — lit from above, grounded at the bottom — instead of a stack of separate layers. That’s the difference between “assets in a box” and “a place,” and the floor was the thing quietly giving it away.

This is the start of a longer look-and-feel pass. I want the whole game to feel this considered, not just the floor — but the sand was the thing bugging me most, so it went first.

— K.