Solara

Solara is a chill, low-pressure mobile game where you tend a floating sky-island powered by a sleeping sun-spirit. By gathering light, growing solar-flora, and helping community travellers, you slowly heal a quiet world that has rebuilt itself in harmony with nature and gentle technology.

Animal Crossing meets Stardew Valley, set inside a Studio Ghibli sunrise.

Solara

Solara begins with arrival.

Project

Original concept · solo

Role

Art direction, design, renders

Tools

Procreate · Blender · Figma

Year

2026 — in progress

The pitch

A cozy mobile farming game where you bring an abandoned planet back to life by terraforming, sending drones, and salvaging the ruins of the old civilization.

The player fantasy

You're a small soul on a long, quiet pilgrimage.

The world is dead but not hostile — it's just waiting. You're the patient hand that brings it back, one tile at a time. Every time you show up, something more is growing — and slowly, a green town you've built with your own hands appears around you, full of warmth and quiet nostalgia for a life that was almost lost.

The differentiator

Your farm is contagious.

In Solara, you're not just farming on your own plot. A living mycelium network spreads from every crop you grow, healing the soil tile by tile, and the planet itself visibly transforms from rust to green as your reach expands. Drones keep working while you're away, salvaging the ruins of the old civilization for fragments of lore and craft materials. There are no enemies and no failure states — the world is dead but not hostile, just waiting. Solara takes the comfort of cozy farming and gives it a cause: you're not building a farm, you're reviving a planet.

Visual direction

Stylized 3D with the hand-painted warmth of Studio Ghibli, the desert melancholy of Moebius, and the overgrown architecture of Bosco Verticale.

Never sterile, never glossy. Friendly Ghibli-era robots wander a world that travels from rust-orange to lush-green over time.

Three art pillars

Weathered

Every surface tells a story of having been here a long time, alone.

Patient

No rush, no urgency. Time is a tool, not a pressure.

Returning

The world is coming back, and the art shows it — green creeping into orange, life into ruin.

Color palette

Rust to green.

The palette is built around the journey. Warm earths and rust dominate the early game. Plant life and sky greens take over as the planet heals.

Rust
Early-game soil
Sun
Lantern, late light
Bloom
The first green back
Sage
Mid-game foliage
Sky
Daytime, water
Patina
Weathered tech
Dusk
Night, deep shadow
Mycelium
Sacred. Sparingly.
Character — silhouette study

Nine silhouettes. One hero.

Designed silhouette-first. Wide-brim hat, practical clothing, traveler's bag — built to read at any size.

Marked: chosen direction.

01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
Narrative arc

Four acts. One quiet pilgrimage.

I

Arrival

Lonely curiosity · 0–4 hrs

You wake up in the lander. The atmospheric scrubbers still work but everything outside is silent. A small worker drone greets you — half-buried in sand, but functional. The first letter from V arrives, washed up at the edge of your reclaimed zone.

90% rust · 10% green
II

The First Returnees

Quiet hope, growing community · 4–15 hrs

People start arriving. Slowly. Each one comes with a reason. Ode the beekeeper. Marsh the engineer. The first community building is restored. A new region opens — Dust Hollow — fully dead, with a ruin at its center.

70% rust · 30% green
III

What V Left Behind

Reverent melancholy · 15–35 hrs

Deeper salvage reveals the truth: V was the last person on Solara before it was abandoned. She built the first mycelium network. She died here. Her notes describe what should grow, where, and why. You're not the savior. You're the second botanist.

50% rust · 50% green
IV

Long Green

Quiet completion. Steward, not savior · 35+ hrs

No boss fight. No ending screen. The game shifts from recovery to stewardship. The mycelium spreads passively now, faster than your interventions. You write your own letter to whoever comes next. The game asks: what would you want them to know?

15% rust · 85% green

Solara is an original concept project. Worldbuilding, art direction, design, and renders by Lera Ovcharenko. Concept developed via photobash and paint-over; renders produced in Blender. Tools: Procreate, Blender, Figma.

Made quietly, on weeknights, in London.
— Lera, April 2026

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