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Just finished both Stasis and Cayne after having them in my backlog for years, and was still left feeling like I wanted more. Backed this immediately after finishing Cayne.
Setting looks interesting. I've been fascinated with sinking ships and ship wrecks lately, and while this isn't quite that, I'm hoping that it might scratch some of that itch.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
With the dawn of 2021 ahead and the unpleasantness of 2020 behind us,
TIME IS TICKING! ONLY A FEW DAYS LEFT TO GET YOUR NAME IN THE GAME AND THE OTHER GOODIES!
UNDER THE M.U.L.E.
“One could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal, hence the relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally variable.” ― H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
To whet your appetite with some pretty screenshots, we turn to the ocean floor just below the M.U.L.E. The Atacama Trench dips between 6km and 8km (25,000 ft) below sea level and is not a place you would tread without a Cayne Corporation Suit.
Apologies if you get this update twice, as a super-backer of both BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION and STASIS! A special thanks to everyone who has supported our isometric adventures to date - you guys rock!
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“One could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal, hence the relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally variable.”
Loved STASIS, looking forward to this. The world and atmosphere is just right yup my alley. I enjoyed BD, but this just more me, and I guess alot of people feel that way.
Gritty sci-fi is so fucking great, i can't ever get enough of it.
Your marketing for this is so weird and confusing. I would recommend you choose one of the following names:
1. Stasis 2
2. Stasis 2: Bone Totem
3. (The) Bone Totem
The current name indicates this is an expansion of some sort.
P.S. I would recommend you extend the campaign. Or at least allow pre-orders with similar tiers. You're running this on your own website, no reason not to.
MAPS
This month I’d like to chat about a new feature we’ve added.
During the production of BONE TOTEM – and based on player feedback – we’ve concluded that we need to illustrate the relationship between characters in the physical space, as well as convey the scale of the environments in which the characters exist.
On DEEPSEA 15, where our intrepid heroes start their journey, the spatial relationship is simple, but as they progress and move further apart, it becomes more complex.
We have multiple characters – each with their own obstacles to overcome so locality can easily become overwhelming. From our perspective, it’s become important to visually represent each character’s journey. When designing each area, we try to make sure that the spaces are interconnected in a way that makes sense.
One of the best and simplest maps that were used to show progression, world scale, and looked awesome was the one used in Doom. Much like the maps from Mario, these top-down 2D maps made you want to know what was around the corner. They were extremely good at conveying information and progression plus they fitted into their game world.
Another map worthy of mention is that of Star Control 2. The star map was actually a gameplay device and it illustrated more than just player location and destination – it also conveyed story elements. When the Urquan started their death march, their sphere of influence would move around the map and consume other space-faring races.
Our early map prototype focused on using a 3D map (a similar concept as the one used in Dead Space 1, for example). This map, once we implemented it, looked cool but it was confusing, and considering the rest of the game is from a locked isometric view, we felt it wasn’t ideal.
There were a few hair-pulling moments and much prototyping! We then settled on a pre-rendered map, with internal layers that would slowly be revealed as the characters explored the world. The map is more graphically and production resource-intensive but it fits right into the graphical style that we have established.
The map gives us another gameplay tool to use – much like Hudson finding the PDTs in ALIENS, we can use the map as a way to solve puzzles, and give other information to our intrepid trio.
Getting these newer gameplay elements in early on in production is always helpful, as it gives us more and more tools to tell the story of STASIS: BONE TOTEM.
P.S. I would recommend you extend the campaign. Or at least allow pre-orders with similar tiers. You're running this on your own website, no reason not to.
Loved STASIS, looking forward to this. The world and atmosphere is just right yup my alley. I enjoyed BD, but this just more me, and I guess alot of people feel that way.
Gritty sci-fi is so fucking great, i can't ever get enough of it.
On an exciting note, BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION won an Aggie Award for Best Graphic Design. It was also nominated in a few other categories such as Writing in a Drama and Best Supporting Character. We hold the Aggie Awards in high regard as the premier adventure game honor.
Nic has been improving the performance of the isometric framework for BONE TOTEM. We're now getting a constant 60fps on our test machines. He has also been incorporating some insanely cool water effects which we'll show off in another newsletter - stay tuned!
We've contracted our first writer, Daniel Hallinan who has worked on many tabletop RPG instruction sets. He really has a knack for descriptive language and all of the world descriptions are dripping with beautiful words. already.
My favorite being; "A wispy web of meat stretches lazily upwards, whatever craft or device holding them aloft hidden in the darkness above. The strands dance and oscillate in time with dust particles, brought to life by the drafty air. Beads of blood hanging from the tendrils, each reflecting a dot of light, a profane decoration upon necrotic wings."
In the meantime, I've been working at full pace on the graphics for the areas that Mac, Charlie, and Moses will explore.
We found ourselves in a bit of a pickle. The fidelity and quality of the pre-rendered imagery were outstripping the quality of the player-controlled 3D characters. These characters are the only 3D assets in the game, while everything else is made up of 2D sprites. I am first and foremost a 2D artist that works in 3D space. 3D real-time models are not my specialty. Keeping this in mind, I spent some time reworking the character assets so that they properly integrate into the latest backgrounds. Luckily for us, we were able to utilize a AAA artist and his models have really spoken new life into the in-game characters of Mac and Charlie.
Chris, the zoomed in perspective from the demo, does that stay? I would've liked the game to be zoomed out abit more, like STATIS was, it feels pretty narrow atm
Chris, the zoomed in perspective from the demo, does that stay? I would've liked the game to be zoomed out abit more, like STATIS was, it feels pretty narrow atm
We're still playing around with the zoom levels. A lot of people with Desolation wanted the game to be a little more zoomed in to see more detail.
The camera in the game is pretty dynamic, and will move a little depending on each scene.
WIth horror games its always a balance between showing too little or too much!
Thanks to your support, this month marks a full year of development of STASIS: BONE TOTEM!
We have made great progress to date and are on track to deliver you an awesome isometric adventure game.
JOIN THE DISCORD SERVER
Since the last newsletters, we are pleased to announce that we have set up a Discord Server. This means you can chat directly with the community as well as us! We will be adding a special role for backers in the near future, so please join up and say hi!
One of the most requested features we have had on our past games is for us to add gamepad support. So we’ve now added native gamepad interaction to the game as an option. We are not merely emulating a mouse, you can actually directly control the characters which is an entirely different experience!
SCENES & GRAPHICS
Chris has been speeding ahead on the scene graphics which are approaching the 60 area mark. We have two chapters of the story left to complete and we are creating some beautiful environments which I am sure you will love to explore. If Insect Lake and Mass Grave tickle your fancy then we have you covered!
Here are timelapse videos of the creation of a scene:
Chat soon,
The Bros.
PS
BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION is almost ready to be released on PS4 and Switch. Untold Tales have been doing the conversion to these platforms and this will be live THIS MONTH, on the 28th of May!
SET THAT REMINDER (OR PREORDER)
