- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,589
Tags: Joe Fielder; OtherSide Entertainment; Underworld Ascendant
It's time for our monthly check-in on Underworld Ascendant. As promised in the game's previous update, the first developer blog backer reward has been delivered to eligible backers, with a developer roundtable session to come later this month. Unfortunately, OtherSide were unable to keep their promise about the vertical slice, which has been delayed yet again. At least there are a few new screenshots, including one of an intriguingly buoyant Lizardman. Here's that and the latest progress report:
The Latest Progress on Underworld Ascendant
As mentioned last month, we’ve been adding new features and additional polish to The Challenge of Ishtass, the area in Underworld Ascendant where the player is first introduced to the bevvy of gameplay options available to them through the Improvisation Engine.
We’ve been focusing in this area on upping our visual bar and proving out our core gameplay — for combat, stealth, magic, and combining them with seemingly mundane objects in the environment to craft creative solutions.
In recent weeks, we’ve been adding additional interactive elements like sticky glue and fire, randomized caches of objects (some clearly useful from the start, some requiring… experimentation), and working out exactly how to reward the player for creativity.
Back during the start of development, we said that we wanted you to come up with ways of solving challenges that we hadn’t even thought of yet and that the game would reward you for it. We’ve made solid strides in this area, which we believe to be essential in unlocking the player’s creativity so they experiment and explore the deep interactive possibilities in the game. We’ll share more about this in the future when this feature is more complete.
The Challenge of Ishtass will be featured in the Pre-Alpha Backer Demo, which we appreciate all of you (who pledged at the ADVENTURER reward tier and above) waiting for so patiently.
We’re finally reaching a critical mass about what’s great about this game — what makes it the next step in Looking Glass-style, player-authored gameplay. So, that’s positive news. We’re holding back the Pre-Alpha Backer Demo and our next video footage a little longer so we can implement additional elements to further round out the core gameplay and get more meaningful feedback from backers on refining it further.
At the same time, any free hands on the team has are busy building out other levels, prototyping new AI, and working out a few ways to more closely involve you in the making of the game.
Also included in the update is an interview with Ascendant's celebrity voice actor, the great Stephen Russell, along with a few sound clips of his work. Nice stuff, but I really hope OtherSide have a release date for the vertical slice soon. Just the other day they announced that they'd hired a marketing guy, so it looks like things are coming together...just really slowly.
It's time for our monthly check-in on Underworld Ascendant. As promised in the game's previous update, the first developer blog backer reward has been delivered to eligible backers, with a developer roundtable session to come later this month. Unfortunately, OtherSide were unable to keep their promise about the vertical slice, which has been delayed yet again. At least there are a few new screenshots, including one of an intriguingly buoyant Lizardman. Here's that and the latest progress report:
The Latest Progress on Underworld Ascendant
As mentioned last month, we’ve been adding new features and additional polish to The Challenge of Ishtass, the area in Underworld Ascendant where the player is first introduced to the bevvy of gameplay options available to them through the Improvisation Engine.
We’ve been focusing in this area on upping our visual bar and proving out our core gameplay — for combat, stealth, magic, and combining them with seemingly mundane objects in the environment to craft creative solutions.
In recent weeks, we’ve been adding additional interactive elements like sticky glue and fire, randomized caches of objects (some clearly useful from the start, some requiring… experimentation), and working out exactly how to reward the player for creativity.
Back during the start of development, we said that we wanted you to come up with ways of solving challenges that we hadn’t even thought of yet and that the game would reward you for it. We’ve made solid strides in this area, which we believe to be essential in unlocking the player’s creativity so they experiment and explore the deep interactive possibilities in the game. We’ll share more about this in the future when this feature is more complete.
The Challenge of Ishtass will be featured in the Pre-Alpha Backer Demo, which we appreciate all of you (who pledged at the ADVENTURER reward tier and above) waiting for so patiently.
We’re finally reaching a critical mass about what’s great about this game — what makes it the next step in Looking Glass-style, player-authored gameplay. So, that’s positive news. We’re holding back the Pre-Alpha Backer Demo and our next video footage a little longer so we can implement additional elements to further round out the core gameplay and get more meaningful feedback from backers on refining it further.
At the same time, any free hands on the team has are busy building out other levels, prototyping new AI, and working out a few ways to more closely involve you in the making of the game.
