Stygian Sentinel 15
Issue #15, November 23rd 2015
Our First Dungeon Playground![edit]
In the last Newsletter we talked about physics-based world for Underworld Ascendant. Now we’re ready to show what this means with an early peek…
Tomorrow we’re releasing the very first build to Backers at the Lore Seeker and higher pledge tiers, who get as one of their perks early access to play these first prototypes. In a few weeks we will roll this build out more broadly to Backers at the lower pledge tiers. Details will be emailed out directly to Backers on how to download the build.
The Playground prototype is all about physics-based puzzles set in a corner of the Stygian Abyss. The visuals have been intentionally dumbed down, since we’re avoiding trying to set any sort of visual bar with this prototype, and instead want to focus on just the gameplay aspects. So be forewarned, it looks as plain as vanilla can ;)
The fun is in the physics puzzles, where we challenge you to solve tricky bits using an early pass of the Improvisation Engine. Even at this early stage, there are dozens of ways to solve challenges, some which I’m sure our team has not yet discovered. Will you? The prototype also features a first pass on the magic system, which likewise feeds into the open-ended nature of solving challenges.
Welcome to the OtherSide Nate Wells![edit]
- Big Daddy from Irrational’s Bioshock
Image Credit: Take Two Interactive
Nate has join the OtherSide team as our Studio Art Director. Nate has been the Art Director on some pretty impressive titles, like Irrational’s Bioshock & Bioshock Infinite, Naughty Dog’s Last of Us and most recently the new Rise of the Tomb Raider. Nate got his start back at LookingGlass as a level designer and artist on Thief & System Shock 2. We are thrilled to have another one from the LookingGlass fold!
- Image Credit: Sony Computer Entertainment
Some words from Nate himself on his thoughts about Underworld Ascendant:
"The artistic vision for Underworld Ascendant is born out of my feelings about the state of fantasy in the world. Not just in games but in film, television and books. Recently fantasy has crossed over into the mainstream with Game of Thrones and the Tolkien movies. One of the things that I really feel is fantasy used to be fun, and now it is gritty, brooding and loaded with political allegory. For me I just have the amazing memories of pen and paper gaming back in the early 80’s and how much fun it was and what a sense of humor it had about itself and I feel that fantasy has lost its self-awareness and its sense of humor. That was my jumping off point for the art direction for Underworld Ascendant.
So I went back and dug out my dusty old Dungeon and Dragons books from my parent’s home and started thumbing through them. I asked myself what was it that I loved so much about that era in fantasy? What I found really was there was a sense of levity, and this naiveté to the art, because a lot of that early art was not done by professionals it was done by game designers that could ‘kinda’ draw. So when you go back to those early 1st edition books you think ‘wow I can’t believe that this piece of art actually made it into a book’. These days we have these amazing professional artists and they choose to use their skills to do fantasy and science fiction which is fantastic, but everyone is getting so deadly serious about it. They want all their fantasy to look…real and feel real. My feeling is most games in the fantasy realm lately have caught this reality bug also. It seems that most groups are about trying to bring fantasy to absolute realism with real trees, and real grass and time of day and all that stuff. I think chasing photo-realism in fantasy isn’t the answer. I think to recapture a retro sense of fantasy, fantasy the way our inner child remembers it. We didn’t have Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings telling us what a castle looked like or what a giant two-headed zombie looked and acted like.
So for Ascendant, what if the world bore the Authorship of a tabletop game? Think of the old lead figures, the miniature play fields and what if Ascendant used that philosophy of everything being hand crafted and looking hand crafted? Natural, man-made…all of it. All of it looks like it was sculpted by an artist. That and bringing back some of the levity to the fantasy. We don’t have to be so deadly serious and bleak. A little more whimsy, and a little less brooding."
Other News[edit]
Check out our last Twitch session! Austin Grossman and Raphael Colantonio joined us while playing Dishonored. An amazing discussion of design by some masters in the field. A must watch if you are into hearing about how we do what we do, and how we avoid some of the pitfalls that iterative design can lead teams into. Watch Here!
Happy Thanksgiving to all our fans!
The OtherSide Team