Joe Richardson - Developer, Joe Richardson Games July 31, 2026 · 4 min read [https://x.com/intent/post?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.xbox.com%2Fen-us%2F2026%2F07%2F31%2Fhow-a-bucket-full-of-pink-cow-dung-became-an-item-in-the-immortal-john-triptych%2F&text=How%20a%20Bucket%20Full%20of%20Pink%20Cow%20Dung%20Became%20an%20Item%20in%20The%20Immortal%20John%20Triptych] Summary - How an improvised design element snowballed into a strange puzzle. - The unexpected chain of reactions that weaved three titles together. - A look into my design process for The Immortal John Triptych [https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/the-immortal-john-triptych/9nks27cjkmxw].

OK, It’s summer 2022. I’m making a house interior for my Renaissance-paintings-come-to-life style adventure game, Death of the Reprobate (one of three critically-acclaimed titles in The Immortal John Triptych) and I’ve ended up with more doors than I anticipated.

Fig 1 – Death of the Reprobate, Carpenter’s House (with screaming babies)

These games are made entirely from chopped up Renaissance paintings, so I can’t just remove a door – not without finding a matching piece of blank wall at least. But large areas of blank wall tend not to be the preferred subject matter of many artists.

I don’t want too many ‘corridor’ scenes because they make for annoying backtracking. And I don’t want too many loops because they tend to make navigation confusing. Also, I’m trying to keep this game small (that didn’t work out), so I’m now in urgent need of a dead end.

I have some on-brand garden/courtyard paintings in a folder called ‘village bits’, but I can’t find a way to stitch them together nicely, and they are full of bloody doors anyway, so I eventually give up and move onto something else. Maybe I go and painstakingly cut around every leaf in the silhouette of an attractive tree, or write a joke about frog’s butts, I don’t remember.

Six months later I’m aimlessly browsing museum catalogues again when I stumble across this beauty!

Fig 2 – Andreas Schelfhout, Binnenplaatsje (1820-1830)

But, Joe! 1820-1830?! That’s not a Renaissance painting! Well, yes, I admit I have been using the term ‘Renaissance art’ increasingly loosely, and at this late stage of development I have been forced to cast my net rather wider than initially intended. But look at it! Clear boundaries either side, a nice open floor area, a potentially petable dog! It even has a stable style door similar to the one exiting the previous scene… The gods have truly smiled upon me.

It will need some work though. The woman kind of has her back to us, and she is performing an action I can’t easily animate in a loop, and the boy looks like a dickhead, so let’s get rid of them. And let’s open up that door and pop a background musician in there while we’re at it (every scene in the game has diegetic music).

Fig 3 – Death of the Reprobate courtyard scene in progress

Getting there, but the scene looks a...