Silent K Productions

Dilogus, Terraria, Detectives, & Kings

2011-05-27T22:11:00.000-05:00

The last post I made was intended to be a series with a second part forthcoming. The second game I was intending to feature was Terraria, a 2D adventure game that features mining, building, and spelunking that can be done online with up to 8 friends. I intended to write about the game in the same manner in which I covered Project Zomboid and give a few expectations for the game, but there was an internal leak of the code with Terraria which led the developers to release the game early on Steam. Thus, the game is already out and is well worth the $10 bucks. If you have three friends, the four pack makes it even cheaper.

I've been rather busy this month, with several new developments that have me rather excited. First things first, the wonderful guys at Digital Arrow have hired me to be their Press Officer for their two upcoming games, Dilogus - The Winds of War and inMomentum. Dilogus is still in development and as such I'll be getting to reveal lots of lore, screenshots, and developer info over the next coming months.

However, inMomentum is scheduled to be released some time this year, with the team working on putting the final polish on the product. I've yet to play it, but I've seen several demonstration videos and it looks a lot like a freestyle Mirror's Edge challenge mode game. I enjoyed Mirror's Edge, so I'm sure I'll enjoy inMomentum when it is released as well.

Getting to work so closely with a development team to help alert the public and craft their expectations is really a dream come true for me. It's my job to keep the public up to date on the development cycle and to help get any questions the community may have about the game answered within the developer's time schedule.

The Way of Kings & L.A. Noire

Brandon Sanderson quickly became one of my favorite authors with his Mistborn trilogy, a well thought out world of fantasy with elements of magic that were as original as they were believable. It's hard for me to get into fantasy novels where one must take for granted that beings are capable of tossing around fireballs and magic spells with abandon, thus most high fantasy is beyond my scope.

It's for this reason that I enjoyed Terry Goodkind's system of Additive and Subtractive magic, and the very same reason I enjoyed the Mistborn's ability to use metals to activate special powers within their bodies. Having a catalyst and some logic behind a magic system takes extra attention to detail, but makes the world that much more believable. It's something I hope to echo in my own fantasy writings as they develop.

That being said, I've been waiting for Brandon Sanderson's latest novel, The Way of Kings, to make its way to paperback. I pre-ordered as soon as the page was available on Amazon, and I received it this week. I was surprised to see the book was nearly 1300 pages long and twice the size of even Terry Goodkind's novels, which usually turn out to be quite lengthy. Nevertheless, I dove in with abandon and even just 100 pages in, I have not been disappointed. As always, Brandon has thought out the system of magic within his world so that it is believable, which is highly commendable. I'm in no position to render judgement on the novel just yet, but I will say it's starting out extremely favorable and I've enjoyed what I've read so far.

In other news on the gaming front, L.A. Noire should be finding its way to my door step soon. I'm excited to pop it in and have a play, especially with everyone on Twitter raving about the facial animations. There's a bit of the uncanny valley here for me to deal with, as the characters all seem nearly waxy in quality in most of the trailers and promo materials that I've seen. However, until I've seen it up close for myself, I really can't make a judgement on the game.

Once I've given both the book and the game a play through, I'll likely have more detailed commentary, so expect that soon.

The First Templar Review

2011-05-15T13:58:00.000-05:00

[Short Disclaimer: I purchased The First Templar solely as a co-op romp, which I played with a friend. The game is completely capable of single player action, but I have not played through the game by myself with the AI controlling the second character.]

The Good

- All three playable characters have unique combos with plenty of varied skills
- Levels switch between action and puzzling to provide a break between the two
- Storyline is historically accurate in relation to the Templar organization (history geek!)
- Customizable character outfits with amazing textures

The Bad

- Guest players cannot assign XP points to their character by themselves
- Facebook integration seems broken for now
- Voice acting ranges from competent to "Wtf were they thinking?"
- Stealth mechanics are a little iffy and seem to work sporadically

I'm going to lay all my cards on the table up front. I'm a history geek and I have a bad habit of getting really excited about history games regardless if they're pre-destined to be mediocre. The last history game that snagged my money and provided me with lukewarm gameplay was Rise of the Argonauts. I left the game feeling somewhat disillusioned and wishing I hadn't plunked down the $25 for that tale, despite the historical setting. Thankfully, The First Templar doesn't count itself among the list of many historically based titles that have disappointed me.

Admittedly, my first experience with the game was a little off-putting, as it has Facebook integration that is supposed to make finding your friend's games easier. I'm always wary of games that want to link up to my Facebook account, but the permissions asked for by the app didn't seem too threatening. The problem I ran into was after setting up the integration, it failed to work. In order to find my friend's game, I had to constantly refresh the lobby menu that features no scrollbar.

However, once we were past the initial hiccup of finding each other, my experience with the game became much more enjoyable. The game starts with both players controlling either Celian, a sword and board tank style character, and Roland, a berserker fellow with a wicked temper. While players can seamlessly switch between these characters using RB, I found it's best to play the character suited to your play style without constant switching.

Each character has their own subset of skills that requires different button presses to execute the attacks, so sticking with the character you're familiar with makes it easier to master those attacks. Surprisingly, these attacks are quite varied. For example, playing as Celian, you can learn a charge, taunt, and whirlwind skills that will keep your partner safe while devastating enemies forced to attack you.

Some measure of tactics are required in fighting, as enemies come equipped with shields that are able to block most of your attacks until they are broken, while others have long reaching spears and pikes that can be devastating when attacking in groups. Understanding which attacks work best in certain situations means you and your partner can combine the longevity of Celian with the absolute devastation that both Roland and Marie bring to the table for an amazing co-op romp.

While the action portion of the combat is engaging and provides a number of tactics you can employ against groups of enemies, the game insists on featuring a stealth mechanic that feels like a tacked on piece of gameplay instead of one well thought out. Sneaking around is easy enough and in certain environments you can throw pots to distract your enemies, but more often than not as you run up to a group in order to take them out silently, they'll turn around for no reason and then the whole camp will spot you. This is frustrating in one particular mission where you must get through an entire camp of marauders without raising an alarm.

One thing that really impressed me with the game was the finishing moves afforded to each character. For example, Marie can vault over an enemy, quickly grab their neck with her thighs, and use her forward momentum to snap the neck all before tucking into a roll that brings her to her feet and ready to attack. For a budget game, I expected one or two attack finishers in this manner, but I counted no less than five different finishing animations for each character.

Unfortunately, the vocal portions of the game are much less polished than the animations. Marie d'Ibelin, described as a French noblewoman, speaks with an accent that seems as though she walked right out of a London pub. I really can't understand why the developers chose to go with an accent that clearly doesn't match the background of the character, when minor characters who yell at your party during battle sound as though they should be following up their jabs with a typical French laugh.

Voice acting problems aside, the story told within The First Templar is actually fairly historically accurate. Players must survive the infamous Friday the 13th hunt during which King Philip IV had all Templars arrested and tried for treason, as well as defending the city of Acre from siege by the Saracens. A nice touch that I enjoyed were a number of tablets hidden around the various levels called Chronicles. These chronicles contained bits of Templar history so if you're not familiar with the trials of the organization, you're not left wondering what the characters are going on about.

Another form of collectible items that are hidden throughout the game are numerous outfits for each of the three characters. These pieces are hidden throughout the levels in chests, so players are encouraged to go off the beaten path in order to find them. The two main characters, Celian and Marie, both have four outfits a piece with matching weapons, for a total of eight different sets of items to find per character. The textures for each of these sets has amazing detail, so while they afford no combat advantage and are purely cosmetic, I still found myself hunting for the pieces just to see them.

The game's main campaign is surprisingly lengthy for an action game. It took my partner and I around 15 hours to beat it, but there were a few backtracking moments in the levels to make sure we got all the treasure chests. The story is a very competent historical action game, if you can forgive the completely misplaced accents of Marie and a few other minor characters. Overall my partner and I had tons of fun coordinating our attacks to take down the enemy groups, and the break up of action and puzzling gameplay throughout the levels is balanced enough to keep you from getting bored of one or the other througout the course of the campaign.

The Steam version of the game came with exclusive content called the Arena, which we have yet to try. It appears to be a wave of enemies type challenge, similar to what Mad Moxxie was for Borderlands, which neither of us really have an interest in.

A Few Projects I've Been Following (Part 1)

2011-04-26T01:16:00.001-05:00

If you follow me at all on Twitter or read anything I write at least once every few months, then you know of my love for indie games. Indie games are able to break barriers and go beyond what large, commercial productions can do because their creativity isn't stifled and their companies--if there is one--aren't mismanaged. For this reason, many of my favorite games that have been released over the past few years have been indie projects, and many of the upcoming releases I am most looking forward to are as well.

I've got two projects I'm going to talk about, so I'll be splitting this post up into two different posts. I feel both of these projects are equally deserving some spotlight attention simply because of their innovative design and the gameplay that has been featured so far. Both of these are in early alpha phases so it's likely lots of gameplay changes will take place, but I think it speaks to the nature of a game when you can see an alpha build and get excited enough to want to pre-order immediately.

Project Zomboid

This one was brought to my attention by the excellent fellows at Rock, Paper, Shotgun and since then I've been following the blog updates for the game religiously. The premise for the game is almost yawn-inducing when you reduce it down to the genre of survival RPG featuring zombies, but some of the steps the development team are taking with the game are going to leave it wide open as a sandbox style RPG with multiple possibilities.

First things first, the development team has been extremely transparent with their end goal for the game. This is not a game with a happy ending. Your character will die. Just as all fortresses in Dwarf Fortress end in ruin, the founding and getting to that ruin are more important than the ending itself. The developers have added several factors that determine your survival, including hundreds of items to scavenge, modifiers that affect your health such as sanity, paranoia, addictions, and general well-being, as well as random events that can occur at any time.

Because the ultimate goal of the game is such that at some point, you're going to lose but lose in a spectacular way, the developers have been working on events that can drastically alter how you play the game. For example, after a month of play, the power plants may shut down, plunging the city into darkness. With no power, you can no longer scavenge food from refrigerators and suddenly a can opener is more valuable than your life for salvaging tin cans.

Shelter and protecting yourself are extremely important, but so is finding the materials you need to make it through day to day life. Items can be scavenged and crafted into other items, with the item interface itself being easy to interact with so there seems to be no need to pause the game as you craft your weapons of doom. As an example, watch this short video where one of the developers crafts a few molotovs to take out rogue zombies.

If you notice in the video, the point of view of your character comes into play as well. You cannot see what's behind you on the screen and if anything wanders out of your field of vision, it fades back into the fog of war. This enhances the realistic nature of the game, since you will need to guard yourself on all sides to make sure you're well protected.

One central aspect of the game that hasn't been detailed by the developers is the multiplayer. While the guys have mentioned they want to include it, I'm not sure in what capacity it will be included. That being said, here's what I would like to see from the game, though I realize these are probably largely high hopes. (Please don't take anything I mention here as verbatim from the devs, because it's not. It's my personal wishes.)

Persistent dedicated servers: so up to 8 friends can play together with the need to fortify their logout location well so that the next time they login, zombies haven't completely run them through.
Group-wide perks: if a person is playing a doctor, medical attention from that person to any of the survivor's group should be enhanced. Another take on this is the affect on morale. If someone in your party gets zombified, that's a pretty big hit to morale and should reflect upon other players.
Stashes: obviously this is sort of counter-productive to group play, especially in an apocalyptic setting, but I still feel like you should be able to hoard food away from others just in case the whole operation goes south.

Once again, Project Zomboid is more about survival until the end, rather than being saved, which I think is an admirable notion. I've wanted a game like this for a very long time, and seeing it come to life in the hands of these indie developers really pleases me. They've recently had some troubles with PayPal and now Google Checkout over their wording for pre-orders, but if you like what you see, head on over to the Project Zomboid website and read the extensive devlogs and hopefully pre-order to help these guys out.

Monster Tale Review

2011-04-21T20:33:00.000-05:00

The Good:
- Unique forms for Chomp add a lot of depth to the game
- Chomp can master moves to use them between different forms
- Ellie's moves offer a lot of variety for defeating monsters
- Gorgeous scenery and graphics that are not overly re-used

The Bad:
- Lots of backtracking makes gameplay tedious in places
- Monsters respawn during said backtracking
- Story is pretty mediocre compared to Henry Hatsworth

I think I'm probably a sucker for games that feature companions. When I saw the first few trailers for Majin & The Forsaken Kingdom, I was excited to be able to play a game where an AI companion would assist me. Monster Tale features the same concept, but instead of toddling along behind you and constantly tripping over his own feet like Majin, Chomp is a sort of Pokemon companion to Ellie in her Metroid/MegaMan style world.

The game begins with Ellie waking up from a deep sleep and wandering outside after hearing a few noises. There she discovers a magical band that wisks her away to another world, where she discovers a magical egg containing a creature she names Chomp. Chomp starts out as a cute little guy, but as he aids Ellie by defeating monsters and as Ellie feeds him and takes care of his needs by providing items dropped by monsters, he becomes more powerful.

The real beauty of the game is that Chomp has a wide range of forms that can be leveled up so that Ellie can face just about any foe without worrying about Chomp becoming a hindrance instead of a help. His forms each have their unique benefits in terms of status such as intellect, strength, and defense, but they're also based around three elements so that fighting monsters opposite of Chomp's elements grant him a huge damage bonus. Different trees for different abilities are unlocked deeper into the game, so it never feels as though you're trapped in using one powerful form over another.

As you travel from region to region within the world, you'll encounter the various Kid Kings have have taken over the world and enslaved the monsters to do their bidding. Occasionally as you pass from screen to screen these Kid Kings will have some banter to progress the story, but it's never really a problem to stop and listen to what's going on as the cut scenes hold valuable information for what's in store for Ellie next. The first few monsters the player will encounter are easy enough, but as you progress through the game, they become more of a challenge and Ellie must rely more on Chomp's ability to help her fight than being an errand buddy for certain interactive objects.

The game makes great use of the DS's dual screens, as the bottom area serves as Chomp's playpen where things Ellie collects are sent for him to study, but occasionally interactive objects and even monsters can appear down there that only Chomp can interact with. Keeping the bottom screen clear of monsters becomes important in later areas of the game, so having Chomp as your companion in the top of the screen is not always wise.

The visuals for the game are in perfect complement to Henry Hatsworth, a game several of the DreamRift members worked on for EA. The game has an anime style to the character designs, but plays very similar to Mega Man or Metroid. Platformer fans won't be disappointed, as the game features more than just run and jump Mario-style gameplay.

My only real complaint is the amount of backtracking you must do to complete the game. Because new abilities are introduced to Ellie's band through podiums scattered throughout the game world, you run into certain areas that cannot be accessed until you have unlocked that ability. Sometimes these podiums are scattered so far apart that backtracking becomes tedious, as monsters respawn on the screen any time you leave it.

Overall, it took me about 12 hours to beat the game, which I feel is a decent length for a DS platformer. The story was pretty 'meh' and is obviously geared toward children, but that didn't take away from the enjoyment of leveling up Chomp and progressing through the various levels to see new monsters and unlock new items and abilities. If you are a fan of either genre represented in this game, then Monster Tale is a must play simply for the sheer enjoyment of exploration and taking care of your monster buddy.

Hydrophobia Review

2010-09-29T14:53:00.001-05:00

Hydrophobia has been on my radar since early E3 demos showed some of the gameplay footage. The problem with footage is that it can look great. Spectacularly stunning. But when you get your hands around a controller and actually start playing the game, well that's a different matter entirely. Manipulating the water to defeat your enemies in a variety of ways is definitely a fresh idea, but it lacks the polish and finesse to make a final product that is actually worth paying the fifteen dollar admission price.

Players take control of Kate Wilson, a systems engineer on a hijacked city-ship known as the Queen of the World. A terrorist group calling themselves the Malthusians have taken over, scrawling their motto "Save the World - Kill Yourself" all over the ship, conveniently including pieces of alien looking code known as ciphers required to unlock certain portions of the ship.

The entire premise of the game is decent; Kate must stop the hijackers from completely destroying the ship while saving her own neck. She's accompanied by her Irish and highly annoying handler who repeatedly offers encouragement in the form of the same reused lines over and over. Slugging through waist deep water that constantly knocks you off your feet only hear "Right.. you need to get to the next loading bay. And guess what? It's encrypted!" in his smarmy voice makes me think the developers realized how repetitive Hydrophobia really is.

Footage would have you believe you are escaping a doomed ocean liner with a bad ass character like Lara Croft or Joanna Dark, but what you're really doing is playing the leftover bits of mini-games other developers rejected from their mainstream titles. I'm surprised the hacking mini-game in Hydrophobia wasn't the connect the pipes hack featured in Bioshock. Instead, you match up frequencies using both analog sticks in a given amount of time. The only game with a more frustrating hack sequence is Alpha Protocol.

Hacking isn't the only mini-game you'll play, either. Instead of finding clever ways to block off access to the ship until Kate needs to be there, the developers have included the previously mentioned ciphers. Apparently the Malthusians have some sort of invisible spray paint for spraying alien graffiti that only Kate's MAVI device can detect. These tedious mini-games make up more than half of the game and contribute nothing gameplay wise other than serving to frustrate the player.

The rest of the time you spend playing will be fighting with the water the developers have lauded. The effects are nice, but perhaps they would be better put to use in an inside look at the Titanic sinking. Some sequences in the game require you to swim from point A to point B underwater perfectly and with the jerky camera and terrible controls, you will find yourself repeating these parts more than once.

The combat in the game isn't much better. Kate's only weapon is a gun capable of creating mini-sonic booms that can influence the environment. Creating these sonic booms to blow up guards or cause them to drown is fun the first few times, but afterwards hiding to take pot shots until you finally kill a guard who wouldn't budge wears on your nerves. Halfway through the game Kate finally gets another type of sticky ammo that causes explosions, but you find so few of these pieces of ammo at a time that they're never a replacement for the sonic blasts.

Overall, Hydrophobia is an interesting idea, poorly executed. Had the game chosen to take a more actiony spproach like Perfect Dark, it would have been highly tolerable. Instead, what you are left with is slogging through a sinking ship playing mini-game after mini-game until the end with terrible combat and controls interspersed. If Hydrophobia is to see the episodic release the developers have discussed, then their first offering is full of failure and there are better things to spend your fifteen bucks on. Why Microsoft chose to start their Game Feat with such a terrible, mediocre game, I'll never know.

Elderlands: Bringing Back Retro Gaming

2010-08-29T15:29:00.003-05:00

While most people got their first taste of online gaming through early MMOs such as Meridian 59 and Ultima Online, I was a little bit late to the party. In fact, it wasn't until the early 2000s that I actually realized there were games you could play online with other people in a persistent environment.

My first MMORPG experience was with a tiny game called Dransik. It was an open beta isometric affair in development by Jason Ely, who was a former Ultima Online dev gone indie. I played from open beta all the way through the commercial release of the game with several fond memories and plenty of friendships still cemented outside the world of Dransik.

A big part of having fun in Dransik was making your own fun, since the few quests that were scattered about the game were usually broken or completely worthles, aside from the guild charter quest which required a ton of effort both from yourself and six other people. When I finally finished the quest line, I formed a guild with the tag HELL, which stood for Hell Hunters. HELL was mainly about player harrassment. We were one of the biggest troll guilds in the game and while I can't say I'm proud of that fact now, back then it was insanely fun.

Eventually it became financially unsound for Jason to continue to maintain the Dransik servers so he sold it off to another company. It was renamed Ashen Empires and the quality degraded to the point it is at today. Ashen Empires is still available and has a pay as you go model with an item store, but the game is so far from its original self I can't even recommend it to anyone.

In 2007, Jason Ely formed If-Else Software and started in his new project, Elderlands. It's a top down fantasy game very similar to Dransik classic. The retro graphics of Dransik Classic have been completely retooled to bring them into the modern era while maintaining their sense of simplicity and unique style. The best part is that Jason has taken the hint from commercial successes on the market in order to create a game that offers more substance rather than online human interaction.

Click any screenshot to appreciate the full-sized version.
The initial builds of the game were very reminiscent of the interface that was present in Dransik Classic, but with a complete overhaul of the graphical style. This is where my love of the game has expanded. The original Dransik Classic was very utilitarian in how it looked. Everything was rendered in 20x20 pixels so it was often hard to tell what you were fighting until you could read the combat log. It was barely one step above an ASCII roguelike you could play online.

However, the work being done on Elderlands is simply amazing. The graphical style is unique and while there are a few oddities to be seen here and there, the party and quest system Jason is incorporating into the game should feel familiar to anyone who has played modern MMOs such as World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, or Age of Conan. It's amazing to see such detailed quest and party systems in what is essentially a top down online roguelike with gorgeous retro graphics.

It is obvious the lengths Jason is going to in order to ensure this creation of his is actually well balanced and caters to the current MMO experience. Whereas in Dransik the traditional moniker of a +3 Long Sword was something to behold, Elderlands features named items that are colored according to their rarity. This accessibility means the game caters to those who love the appeal of a traditional roguelike, while maintaining modern MMORPG roots.

The game is currently in closed beta and access is very spotty, but if you're interested in trying it out at some point, definitely sign up for an account. The client isn't very big and when the servers are up, you'll be exposed to one of my earliest gaming addictions in its purest form.

Faster Gmail Search With CloudMagic

2010-08-28T21:38:00.001-05:00

I use Gmail as my primary email service and while the search is robust, it's not nearly what it could be. I found CloudMagic via an article on Neowin.net and even I wasn't looking for an alternative search for my email, when I tried it out I fell in love with it. It's smart, intuitive and indexes emails quickly, making it a snap to set up and use.

It works for both Firefox and Google Chrome, though the Chrome version is what I have installed. Since I mostly work from a netbook, it's important that I maintain a certain level of screen real estate. The additional search box that CloudMagic adds does not interfere with how you browse your inbox in any way. In fact, one of the most valuable features of CloudMagic is that it can allow you to reference emails in entirely different conversation threads, all in the same tab. This is a godsend for small screens.

CloudMagic is completely free, so if you use Gmail as your main email client, do yourself a favor and try this out. After just a few searches and uses, you'll be asking yourself how you ever did without it.

Alien Fortress 2: The Future

2010-07-24T03:44:00.010-05:00

This past week has been a good one for Steam users. If you aren't aware, Black Cat Games was absorbed by Valve and commissioned to release an updated version of their Alien Swarm game for the Source engine instead of Unreal. I'm not really sure how long the project has been in development, but I recently found the time to sit down with it and I found it highly enjoyable.

However, being a big Team Fortress 2 fan, I couldn't help but feel the game had taken inspiration from the best class based first person shooter on the market and re-cobbled the classes to fit its shoes. Alien Swarm features four different classes, each with two different characters for a total of eight characters to choose from. The classes are Officer, Special Weapons, Medic, and Tech and while the class diversity is somewhat lacking compared to TF2, each class could potentially be shoe horned into the game with the exception of the Spy.

The unlocks you get as you proceed through the levels in Alien Swarm do not pertain to your specific class, so there is no need to level up a particular character, since experience is awarded account wide. This is an interesting model because at the end of each level, you are presented with an unlock that may or may not be related to the character you enjoy playing. For example, if you enjoy the Tech classes, with no preference for the Medic, you will still unlock your Medigun at level 9.

Given the obvious parallels Alien Swarm has drawn between its classes and those available in TF2, such as the Medic and the Medigun, the Tech and his sentry gun, and Special Weapons with the Auto-gun, what happens if we shoe-horn the TF2 characters into the model Alien Swarm provides? Would you be inclined to play that game? As an example, here are a few screenshots of what such a mock up would look like.

The is a mock up of the class selection screen that you are presented with when you begin a mission. No classes ahve been selected, so all the default options are silhouettes.

Here's the entire team selected and ready to go. You can clearly see the weapons everyone has selected, as well as what characters. In the original Alien Swarm, the area that has Soldier's bio up above has the stats for the characters, but since Team Fortress 2 doesn't have stats, this is pretty filler. I would imagine Soldier would fill the roll of the Leader if shoe-horned into Alien Swarm.

This is the game presented as it is in Alien Swarm. I didn't have the means to add in the lasers that are present in Alien Swarm, but the general idea is there.

Obviously this takes TF2 to a different level, since it is no longer a first person shooter, but instead a third person tactical shooter. The concept would be interesting because it would be two teams of four (possibly five) going up against one another for domination of the map. Each game mode that is currently seen in TF2 would be relevant.

Whether or not a game in this style would be playable remains to be seen, but it would definitely be interesting. So, would you play this game?

Party of Sin: Looking Good!

2010-07-22T01:23:00.007-05:00

Party of Sin is an Xbox Live Arcade game that is currently in development by CrankShaft Games. They've been hard at work on their project since I first learned about it in March and over the course of just a few months, they have really been chipping away at the style of the game. Watching the development of games is something I have always enjoyed because of the drastic changes that can occur, so developers who document their process well will always receive tons of attention from me in this regard.

The first few updates on the website explain the process of designing each character, with Greed, Lust, and Pride each having a unique process. The over all design of the characters is interesting and I've always enjoyed seeing how people arrive at different designs. Concept art is one of favorite things to behold because of the many changes characters can go through. The CrankShaft team really has their work cut out for them, because they are personifying each of the seven deadly sins.

This past week the team finally released a few alpha screenshots of the game to the public and asked for opinions and concrit. I was happy to see what the team had come up with, but a few glaringly obvious things stuck out at me like a sore thumb, especially after having just played through Darksiders and Dante's Inferno a few months ago.

The above screenshot is a division of a before and after, only reversed. The side on the left is what the prototype of the game looks like now, while the side on the left is the first screenshot of the same area before any improvements were made.

Alexander Galasso contacted me on Twitter and let me know when the screenshots had been released on the Party of Sin IndieDB.com profile, specifically asking for my input. Here is what I had to say about the right hand side of the above image:

First of all, I want to say kudos on getting these shots up. I really love the cartoony feel you guys are going for the game, as it is one of my favorite art styles. That being said, I do have a few suggestions.

In the first screenshot, I know you said you're not finished with the lava and you mention the edges, but the entirety of the lava looks very static (but it's a screenshot! I know, I know). Lava is very mobile even in large pits. It's constantly flowing moving, bubbling. It's also extremely hot and is a form of a light source because of the super heated temperature. The edges and walls of the cliff beneath the bridge should be displaying some of this light. Sounds silly, I know, but check out these screenshots:

Katsbits.com
MousePlanet.com

See how the light generated by the lava hits the walls? You're missing this so it makes the images look a little flat. The same could be said for the skybox. It looks very much like a 2D background and I think this could be changed by a slight alteration of the color so that it is lighter on bottom (closer to the source) and darker towards the top of the screen.

Aside from the issues with the lava not feeling real enough, I'd say the rest of it looks pretty damned good. Lava that is fixed in the second screenshot would improve it immensely, and the third screenshot does look a tad cluttered, but that's because my eyes can't easily discern where I should be going if I were playing the game. Light sources are a good way to draw the players eye from point to point, so you might want to consider using them for directional as well as aesthetic purposes. If you've ever played any Valve game and you get lost, always remember: Head toward the light.

The team responded positively to my suggestions and as you can see by the left hand side, several improvements have been made. One of the improvements I suggested was lighting to help the player discern a path. As you can see in the header image, torches are now placed periodically, which drastically helps improve a player's understanding of where they should be going.

The lava has also been much improved, since even in a screenshot you can tell that it is a moving, bubbling mass of fire. A post on the official Party of Sin website released the new screenshots with the following to say about them:

Some of the improvements that are still needed are related to the background and the lava. As of now, it is really bright and clips with both the walls and background. It doesn’t look smooth at all. We haven’t yet implement Overlorder’s [sic] idea of inserting a glow around the lava. This should come into effect within the next couple of weeks.

I'm definitely excited to see all of these changes because they are a drastic improvement over what was shown only a week ago. This shows that the team is taking input seriously in order to make the best looking game possible, which can only bode well for future development. Even without the lava glow that I suggested, the fog that now resides over the background serves to distinguish the atmosphere from actual gameplay elements, making it a 100% improvement in terms of understanding what you can interact with and what you can't.