MBGJ25

Inspiration and Concept

In our game, you have no patience and all the style imaginable as you shred your way through the world. In this action platformer/hack-and-slash, you're definitely not a hero; you're a chaotic delinquent with bad hair and a worse attitude. Pull off absurd stunts, and be sure to let every enemy know they were annihilated by someone far cooler than them.

 When initially brainstorming ideas for the jam, many members of the team weren’t interested in working on a traditional horror game. Developing horror games can be challenging, and they can often fall flat and end up not being scary. However, horror doesn’t just have to be jump scares. Our game combines the high-octane action of Jet Set Radio with the unsettling nature of 2010’s weirdcore horror. 

Early Development Progress

While still early in the development process, the team’s art, design, and audio teams have been working on many fantastic concepts and assets for our game. Our project is ambitious, and our development team is larger than most game teams. With an ambitious project and a large development team, we have had to focus on strong communication, planning. Our project manager and producer have done a wonderful job keeping everyone on track, and facilitating communication. This past week, the entire team laid the foundations with concept art, design documents, coding standards, and audio tracks.

Next Steps

In the next phase of development, we will be laying many of the core building blocks that will bring the game to life. Our programming team will develop the initial foundation for the core movement mechanics of the game, ensuring that our main character can move with the speed and style demanded by the game design. The audio team will be integrating FMOD, enabling us to implement dynamic sound effects that respond to our characters' every move. Finally, the art team will be focused on creating and implementing assets, including character, enemy, and environment models and textures. 

Team Member Spotlight and Q&A

During the first week of the project, Vinny has been instrumental in developing the visual identity of the characters. Even though Vinny was busy with work on the character designs, he was able to find time to answer some questions and talk about his thought process and workflow.

[What is your process when starting new concept art? Do you start with thumbnails, mood boards, and/or gathering references?]

"The process differs all the time; sometimes the egg comes first, sometimes it’s the chicken. It just really depends. Sometimes you doodle a character on accident, and you explore it further by drawing thumbnails, but sometimes you see a really cool reference photo and build off of that and do more research to make it feel more complete. Ultimately, I just want the creation process to feel fun."

[Where does your main source of inspiration come from when designing characters? Real life, media, imagination?]

"Real life. Media can start a spark as well, but there’s so much from real life that you can source inspiration from; that is essentially where all art comes from. Imagination is just how you use that inspiration. "

[How did the game's genre influence your design choices?]

"Game genres influence my design choices because it changes how and what you need to communicate to the player. Whether it’s an FPS, top-down, third person, you’re wanting your design to communicate to the player who they are, what they can do, or what their power is, and what they need to focus on; this all changes depending on the genre and influences your design choices. "

[How do you balance creativity with practicality?]

"During the exploration phase of concept work, it’s 100% just creativity. I want to be able to explore freely and with no limits, so I’m not too concerned with how practical something is until I have to start finalizing designs. However, functionality matters a whole ton throughout the entire process. If this design doesn’t serve its function, then it’s almost pointless."

https://www.artstation.com/khuffmaster

See You Next Time!

We appreciate you coming along on this wild ride! In the upcoming development logs, I’ll be throwing you right into the madness: you will get to hear some groovy audio tracks, you’ll see character models and animations, and awesome environments. In the coming weeks, you'll get to watch our delinquent hero race through the world, dispatching monsters and wrecking everything in their path. Stay in touch and get a front row seat to the chaos.