Category Archives: Concept Art

DevBlog 104 / More weapons, more fun!

Hello everyone, hope you’ve all had a pleasant week!

We’ve always intended to develop some new weapons to add even more variety to combat as soon as the major areas of our game were completed, and the team has decided that time has come! Our in-house carpenter has just been shifted to the smithy, where he’s currently tackling the following blueprints:

One of these weapons lets you be one step ahead of your enemies, guess which!

There has also been some further planning and discussion regarding our older animations, while also taking into account all the feedback we’ve received so far from testers, QA and players at PAX, which has lead us to start working on tweaking and improving some of them. Below you can see our old dodge animation first, and then the new one, which is still a work-in-progress, which provides better visual feedback to the action, and provides a better feel to combat:

Guilty feet have got no rhythm!

The new dodge animation, wip!

Last but not least, we kept the QA and bug squashing going, and every week that passes the game feels better and plays better, which is extremely gratifying and motivating!

That’s all for this week, have a pleasant weekend and stay tuned for more!

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DevBlog 94 / What? Ada is evolving!

Hello, travelers!

Today we’re excited to bring you exciting news, pardon the redundancy, regarding our protagonist, which has received a full overhaul! Feast your eyes upon her new look!

Hello, gorgeous!

The reason why we’ve reworked her visuals is because her original version was inspired on an old concept of a different artist, and the game’s visuals have been taking a slightly different path than what was originally planned.

What should we be wearing today?

We’ve decided to do it at this stage since we have much more experience in creating something that melds with the current art direction and visual style, and we’re already done with the High Poly version, so she will be in the game soon enough!

Some of the initial areas of the game are being further developed according to this logic, as we enter the final stages of production.

Regarding the last area, we’ve been fleshing out both the Palace and the encompassed region, and the following screenshot might be related to this!

Hold it!

One of the cutscenes is being actively worked on and will make its debut on the show build, some new animations were… animated specifically for this, and some additional logic as well. This build is nearly 100% complete, we’ve been squashing some bugs and will perform further QA in order to make sure it’s buttery smooth!

That will be all for today, we look forward to next Friday!

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DevBlog 88 / Village, Potions and Polishing

And it’s our favorite time of the week again, yes!

…Hello!

That’s one big wishing well!

Ain’t it a beauty? The village is now complete AND populated, so all that remains for it is a final polish round, together with all the other areas, when we’re done with all the locations of the game world.

The Royal Guard has also been completed, with all its animations and behaviors, and he’s been particularly busy destroying our testers and developers without breaking a sweat!

Two familiar faces, one shirtless torso.

Oh, there’s the village again, awesome! Anyway, we’ve also added the final set of potions, with additional logic for the buff/debuff system, which will provide more depth and dynamic to combat, choose what potions to carry wisely and you’ll have a better time!

Another QA testing session took place, where we reviewed older issues and took note of a few new ones that came up, we’re doing these more frequently as we further development and the results are speaking for themselves.

The final chapter is on its way!

Glorious! Work has just begun on the final areas of the game, which lead to the Kingdom Castle… we’ve come a long way!

For the next week, we’re hoping to bring you some magical goodness and further details on this new system that has been recently introduced, we’re all very excited about it and you should be too!

Have a great weekend and thank you for reading!

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DevBlog 76 / Dungeons &…Hold the Door!

Hi everyone!

This week we’ve added a new, simple mechanic to add more diversity to the main puzzle of the zone we are currently working on. Inspired by the Indiana Jones Movies, specifically where stone doors close slowly, you’ll have to sprint and slide in order to successfully reach the other side.
We are focused on maintaining a smooth learning curve as far as puzzles are concerned, so we’ve increased the complexity of previous puzzles in the game in order to prepare players for the challenge this latest one provides!

*Indiana Jones Music intensifies*

Using our modular dungeon system, we’ve also done some extensive dungeon building tests, however, it still remains to be decided whether we will add randomly generated dungeons or at least different layouts for them in NG+ and beyond!

Custom dungeon example.

We decided to add a new threat to the player – elite soldiers, members of the royal guard, that will surely be a tough challenge to those who dare face them. Here is the concept:

Royal Guard Concept.

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DevBlog 74 / I could barrel-y dodge that!

Hi everyone!

Today we will show you one of the new enemies we added and teased recently, the Mimic Barrel. Even sneakier than the Chomper, it will pounce when you are carelessly looking for some random items inside barrels and crates. It delivers fast attacks and is very agile, which will certainly make killing it your top priority.

The Chomper is also complete, with all the attacks it requires, such as throwing things at the player depending on the zone it spawns in, like mud, sand, etc.

We also tuned the camera a little bit, which now adds a small offset when the player is locked to a target, so he/she can always see the focused enemy.

Oh my God!

The work on the new area is progressing smoothly, we are using the following concept as the main guide for the mood we intend for this location:
Meanwhile, the high-poly model for the new boss is pretty much finished, so the game-ready version will surely be developed during next week!

Mood concept for the canyon.

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DevBlog 70 / Hi! Anyone seen my toothpick?

Hello, everyone!

This week, we’ve got some character art and a few new animations to show you guys. It’s vacation time for the members of the team, but we made sure to schedule everything so that there’s always at least one of us working on the game. This way, the development is never really halted.

As part of our current objective of adding more enemy variety and flexibility to the project, we designed a new creature that will pester the player in any area of the game. Just like the monster that hides in a barrel, which we showed last time, this new enemy is not “chapter specific”, and that allows us to use it freely while building the world.

Hi! Anyone seen my toothpick?

Basically, this little fellow hides beneath the ground with only its leaves sticking out to blend with the surrounding vegetation. Once the player gets close, it will pounce!

Why hello there! ( Jump Across animation )

Take that! ( Sweep Kick animation )

Oops sorry! I was just kid-ding! ( Being Hit by Player animation )

On the animation department, the masked youths are rocking a couple of new moves. While fighting, they react to the player’s actions by chaining attacks or dodges. For example, if their low kick does not connect, a quick dagger slash will follow. As you might have guessed, facing this opponent will prove to be a very different challenge from the ones in previous chapters.

Have a nice weekend!

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DevBlog 69 / QA is coming…!

Hi everyone!

Actually, QA came early during the week, and we’ve been doing some extensive sessions which led us to implement some additional tools and on-screen information for assisting with the playtesting and debugging of the game!

On-screen debugging info.

The new streaming logic we mentioned last week is still being tweaked and optimized, and we’re pretty happy with the results we’re getting!

Streaming chunk visualizer.

A new animation for the masked youths is also nearing completion, as you can watch see below.

Canyon kid evade animation.

We felt the need to add a little more variety to the game’s enemy pool, and we thought it would be cool to have less “area specific” creatures the player could fight with. Most of the ones we have so far are basically bound to the chapters they first appear in, and there’s no way around that because of the lore. So we are coming up with new ideas for creatures that can spawn anywhere throughout the whole adventure. The first one is a monster that inhabits barrels, and it will keep you on your toes anytime you’re about to destroy these wooden containers in hopes of finding random items.

Producing the assets for this enemy also forced us to remake the basic barrel and crate props, for the sake of coherence, especially because the ones we had previously were recycled placeholders.

We could Barrel-y see it coming!

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DevBlog 66 / Jetpacks, picnics gone wrong and tribals!

Hi there!

This week we continued working on the current chapter’s end boss, nearly all of its move-sets are complete, while the AI polish and behavior are currently in the works. This boss has a lot of extra moving parts and we experienced some problems managing several of its animations simultaneously, but we’ve solved this in the end.

A fully functional jetpack!

We also finished populating the environment of this chapter while also adding the logic to support it, now it’s time for testing and to finish balancing! Here are some combat encounter screenshots:

Two’s a company…

…three’s a crowd!

Unity 2017 released an awesome new tool for cinematics, so we’ll have to port our existing ones and create the future ones with it for a more cinematic and professional feeling.

Regarding the next chapter, players will mostly be facing a new threat, the masked youths that dwell in the depths of the Rift! Their visual concept was inspired by a Portuguese tradition, the “caretos”, as well as Princess Mononoke’s battle costume. Their motives for attacking the girl on sight will have to remain a mystery, for now…

Orphan kid.

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DevBlog 65 / Steam Valve

Hi everyone!

This week we’ve discussed some new ideas and concepts for the next chapter of the game. It will take place in the bottom of the canyon, bordering the windmills zone which you might be familiar with.
We already have some concepts of the new characters and a lot of references, so the ideas are getting close to a conclusion.
For the previous chapters, André had already made some blocking, level design and testing. This final zone is currently drafted on paper, so the next devblogs may be focused on its level design and the details we would like to add.

The boss of the previous chapter is nearly done and currently being worked on by our animator. Here’s a small WIP preview of his weapon in action:

Steam weapon shooting animation WIP.

This zone has a steam theme, which is noticeable due to the mechanisms that are clearly inspired by it. The player will be searching for valves to activate and new paths to unlock. Although the steam particles are an early work-in-progress, they have already been implemented to set the mood for this theme.

Interacting with the valve.

Examining the valve.

For the next week part of team will be working on the new characters and level design of the next chapter of the game. Stay tuned if you are into level building!

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DevBlog 59 / Battle zone encounters

Hi everyone!

One of the dynamics of the area we are currently developing is the constant surprise of combat. While walking among the corpses of soldiers who have fallen on this battlefield, the player will never know which might turn out to be a threat. This mechanic has a threshold, so hopefully the player will never feel overwhelmed by the amount of enemies at any given time.

Careful where you step.

This week we have captured some gameplay footage to pinpoint some collision problems, add additional particles and polish some combat behaviors. We tested this approach so that the gameplay wouldn’t be filtered by the usual editing workflow, allowing us to really observe how things are coming together. We also added new stylized particles, but this is an ongoing process and it’s still not ready to be shown.

Art-wise, the creation of the new boss character we’ve mentioned before is progressing nicely. The concept phase is basically over and production has already started. We want the design to remain a surprise for now, but we decided to show a small teaser – the concept of the boss’ weapon. The team is committed to making this battle a pretty epic moment, so the weapon just had to be somewhat over the top!

Boss’ weapon concept.

We’re also doing some water tests like we said some time ago. There’ll be no ocean in this game, but small lakes or big puddles. Paulo (working on Amplify Shader Editor) has been lending the DoL team a hand by doing some ripple effect experiments. These will be used in some specific zones throughout the game.

Ripple test.

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