![]() You've announced only PC, but Switch is definitely on your radar? As a games artist, It is important it has its own identity and try to do new things with the genre to give it its own flavour and feel different to anything that you have played before. The enemies should feel dangerous but the player should also feel powerful. The weapons have to feel chunky and the levels must be interesting to navigate. Recreating that feeling of playing a fast-paced FPS is the number one goal, but also adding new twists to refresh the genre. The rear-view mirror plays a part in the aesthetic too, with the mirror allowing for different view modes (i.e the Hellscreen version of night vision, invisible enemy detection etc). The redder colours stand out and draw the eye to dangerous elements allowing the player to focus on the second to second gameplay and be aware of all hazards. The aesthetic is designed to stand out from other games initially but also has a gameplay language. How is the aesthetic integral to the experience? Old pixel art from some Amiga games as well as a particular stage from Streets Of Rage II are always present in my mind too. Arthur C Clarke's writings are a huge influence on the world building too, especially with some of the grander ideas that are present in his books. ![]() I actually started with the art style and design and worked the story into that. The Alien movies and by extension, the works of Giger are a primary influence on the art style which in turn informed the story. There is a heavy backstory and lore to the game- what works of popular culture influence you? People don't need a lot of references to understand that it is in that genre of games. On the flipside, the '90s FPS revival also makes it easier to share and be part of a community. People tend to judge very quickly too (who can blame them with so much new information being released every minute!) so trying to convey that it isn't just a devil daggers clone is an ongoing issue. This has been especially apparent in the Kickstarter where I could have had more emphasis on the unique gameplay features in the game. I think its always difficult to convey the idea of the game effectively. ![]() Hellscreen is a retro-inspired game in 2018 - is that difficult to balance in terms of consumer expectation? I play as many indie FPS as I can to see how they compare. I'd say I was more inspired by other games - Devil Daggers inspired me in terms of scope but the main influences are Alien Trilogy, Jedi Knight, Classic Doom, DOOM 2016 and more recently Dusk. Killzone Mercenary kept reminding me that I wanted to develop the old idea of Hellscreen at the time but no direct influence was really there. Has any of your other work influenced Hellscreen in any way?Ī lot of my work has been so stylised and kid-friendly that that side of my experience hasn't really influenced Hellscreen much. More recently I have been freelancing and has seen me return to a small environment/props based role. The last few projects tended to have me wearing a few hats and looking more at technical ways to achieve features and effects and performing a more senior role. Generally, throughout my jobs have involved creating environments and props. The roles only really changed in terms of responsibility from project to project. not at all! Did your roles differ much from project to project? Your body of work is split between being similar in tone to Hellscreen, and then. Since then, I added more idle clicker style elements, the rear-view mirror and transforming weapons. Taking that seed and mixing it with more recent ideas for mechanics and until it began resembling what you see today. After I got the basics in, I started revisiting an old idea for an FPS which I had in my head for about 15 years - Doom but with a heavy emphasis on Giger-inspired architecture. It allowed me to use a node-based scripting language to prototype some FPS mechanics and create a little playable inspired by devil daggers, but with a Game Boy palette. The project initially started as a way to learn new plugins for unity called 'playmaker'. Sounds awesome, so how did the project start?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |