Pariah on pause and the beginning of Reynard

If you’ve been following our blog, you’ve read that we are working on a game called Pariah: Anton. Well… the development did not come to an end, but it reached the point where we took a pause.

Here are couple of reasons for the pause:

  • I have to finish couple of systems (AI is one of them).
  • Žiga still has to finish environment and UI art.
  • Patrick has some song and SFX writing to do.

I can tell that my motivation dropped because I’ve been working on a codebase for a long time. And the biggest reason for the motivation drop is a lack of vision of a finished game. I’ve reached a point where I couldn’t visualize the end game and that made me very frustrated.

The team had a meeting where we discussed the future of the game and how we’ll implement some stuff to finally finish it. A couple of days before that meeting I’ve shown guys a prototype I’ve been working on… And because prototype seemed cool… On a meeting, we decided to start and finish that prototype before finishing Pariah.

The prototype – Reynard

Sometimes when I have no willpower to work on certain projects, I start prototyping and designing other stuff. Which certainly isn’t a pattern that many other developers face. As a fan of Hyper Light Drifter, Final Fantasy and Zelda games, I knew that sooner or later I’ll open Unity3D and start working on my own version of a top-down game.

It actually happened… and unlike other times when I keep prototypes for myself, I showed it to my friends in hyper fox studios.

It is a very basic prototype of a top-down game, but it directed us on a new path. To keep me motivated to the end of the project, I’ve decided to post an update on a Reynard game every Friday!  Follow us on social media to stay tuned!

Regards,

Filip

 

 

Paraih pause Prototype reynard unity3D

Pariah: Anton – Generated grass biomes [screenshots]

I still didn’t find the time to write the whole progress report about Pariah, but I can say that in the evenings I’ve been practicing pixel art and during the daytime, I’ve been programming! Because Žiga was late with his art work, I’ve imported my own creations to the generator and it produced couple of cool looking grass biomes 😀

 

Huge story teaser

Vegetation is pink because of the Artimoon.

We’ve also had a poll about which style would the players prefer to see in the  released version of the game. Majority of people we asked… where n = 6, 4 said that they prefer the art style on the right (picture below).

Pariah tree art style

 

 

 

 

PS: I’m the author of the style of the “left” tree – which was used in the current biome generation and Žiga modified it to his style on the “right”. I Will show the next screenshots with the modified style as soon as they are available 😀

Till then,  stay pixely and if you’re interested in updates about our upcoming game Pariah, subscribe to our newsletter and check out our social media.

Cheers,

Filip

 

 

art pariah screenshots

Pariah: Anton – progress report #1

pariah anton devlog 1

“Pariah: Anton” is our next upcoming game. It is going to be a combination of tower defense game and a 2D sidescroller set in an apocalyptic cyberpunk world. The game will have a background story with as little text as possible (Yeah… I’m a fan of Hyper Light Drifter and Kingdom).

Game info

Player’s main mission will be to gather chips, upgrade his base, craft robots, assign them roles, upgrade them, destroy the spawns of hostile creatures (zombies, monsters and probably other god forsaken creatures.) and escape from planet. The game won’t focus as much on player’s main character as on building base and crafting robots. The crafting system will be as simple as possible, but still enjoyable. Each playthrough will be different because the map is always going to be randomly generated.

Release

We are aiming to release the game on a PC in September and when the time is going to be right, we’re gonna try our best to greenlight the game on a Steam market.

Progress

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about the architecture of the whole game, the player’s movement, which events will be tracked, AI for robots, zombies, monsters etc..

I still don’t have a lot to show you, but till now, I’ve imported a simple sprite (from the asset store) which represents the player (no complicated animations or any other fancy stuff because the main character is still in the drawing board), I’ve imported a sun and a moon drawn by Žiga. The ground is currently decorated with a tileset which will not be used in the final game – we’re aiming for cyberpunk style palette and a little bit simpler shapes.

Player controls

Because the game mainly focuses on the AI of robots and Enemies, the player controls are going to be quite simple. Player is going to be able to walk, dash and use an action button. In video you can see player walking, dashing and dropping chips (without animations :D).

Day and night

Night will stand for terror and will spawn waves of monsters. Day will serve for exploration. I’ll have to figure out which length of day and night will fit the game tempo. We really don’t want player to get bored. That’s why I’m thinking about adding special events which can occur anytime and will lure player to explore the unknown.

Biome generation

World’s will be made out of different “biomes”. Currently we have plan to create biomes for: Base, Grassfield, Forest, Junkyard, Factory. Base will always spawn in the middle of the world and will server as a starting point for our player. Player will be able to expand his base to other biomes. I’ll write more about biomes in the future devlogs. For now I have developed a world generation system which semi-randomly chooses and position biomes in the game.

In video you can see biomes colored for debugging purposes:

  • Base: cyan
  • Grassfield: yellow
  • Forest: green
  • Junkyard: magenta
  • Factory: red

We still have a long way to go to finish our “Pariah”. but then again:

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. – Lao Tzu

If you want to stay updated about our progress, subscribe to our newsletter or social networks.

Filip

anton game introduction pariah