Next Stop - Shibe Town

So we're already into our second week of development for our newest project, code named "Shibe Warz," and from an art perspective, it's coming along splendidly.  I've recruited another artist to help me with this project's detail-oriented workload, and so that'll at least take some of the load off of my back.  That aside, I'm having a tremendous time so far concepting and completing all of the art assets that are needed.

The game itself is a 3-Dimensional tactical game set on a resizeable game board, composed of squares.  Each square is a tile that is able to be walked on by the player's character pieces, and the board itself is a "battlefield"  akin to chess.  Specifically meant to be a 2-player competitive game for the PC, each player will begin the match with a certain amount of "gold pieces" (determined by the size of the board and the number of character pieces agreed upon), and will then use those gold pieces to purchase "load-outs" for each of their pieces.  There are no set "classes" in the game, but it is fantasy-based.  That means that your pieces begin completely naked (mechanically speaking), and it is your job to purchase spells for them to use, or weaponry if you prefer, or a combination of both if that strategy strikes your fancy.  The same goes for different pieces of armor, of which there are varying types, and each piece of armor translates to differing damage reductions and movement speeds (the heavier and more protective the armor, the more of a movement speed penalty the character piece has).

This translates directly to intricate gameplay facilitated by the ease of the load-out system.  For instance, do you want a heavily-armored spellcaster, with a full set of armor, a shield in one hand, and a powerful spell in the other?   Spend the gold coinage on each piece of that load-out, and he/she is yours! Want an unarmored, ridiculously fast healing character, with a dagger in one hand (capable of high backstab damage) and a weak-but-fast healing spell in the other?  COINS.  BAM.  DONE.  The effortless ease with which you can combine these parts of your character, along with many others including helmets and usable items, is incredible, and emerged out of a Verus meeting in downtown Philadelphia.  I am so excited to be working on this project.

I'm also very excited to see how far we've come since even the development of Spell Bound.  There is nothing quite like grinning and bearing the burden of discomfort while trudging through something you're barely ready to handle, and then coming out clean and SMARTER and BETTER on the other side.  Learning.  It's fantastic.  Our workflow is exponentially faster.  Our technical expertise is actually and realistically approaching some semblance of "expertise," and this all means that development is becoming technically easier which leaves more room for working on the actual "DESIGN" of our game.  Rather than worrying how to animate something, or wasting time trying to fix an amateur bug in the code, we've learned how to steamroll these problems before they even arise simply due to our previous experience of having to deal with those problems.  And they are problems that delay even the best-intentioned, most ambitious people from beginning a project, much less overcome halfway through.  This experience is brilliant.  Simply brilliant.   And invaluable to the future of Verus Games.

For reference, here are a few screenshots of the models and textures so far for Shibe Warz.  It's due in Mid-December for PC, and so far it's on schedule.  Enjoy! 

 ~ Anthony

P.S.  Click on the below picture to cycle through the entire gallery of concept images! Enjoy the reel!