biped Developer Blog: Beginnings
We’re super excited to be able to share some of the development story about biped, our upcoming couch co-op game that the team at NEXT Studios will be releasing next year on PS4, and then on Nintendo Switch!
Biped is a co-op game based around ragdoll physics and the use of the controller’s analog sticks to control each of the character’s LEGS, not just the character themselves. Biped is special in many ways and it has been a truly fun game to make as well as play. So today we’ll spend a little time talking about where the idea for the game came from.
Initial biped conceptBack in 2017, two of the team’s developers Ru Zhenchao and Zhao Jing were prototyping another concept in which a biped side character was conceptualized to support part of the design intentions.
Initial rough gameplayAt the time we hadn’t planned to make a game around such biped characters. But as we continued with the original concept we realized that in fact, the biped characters were not only fun to control but also cute and exciting to watch!
By rotating the analog sticks, players get a 1 for 1 control over the legs and this creates a sense of purpose for each action and each input. The physics and controls created an immersive experience and brought the player directly into the game so that they could FEEL each and every step.
After spending more time with these secondary characters, the team thought, “Hey, we might have something special here.” So we decided to shift the project’s focus from the original concept to the two-legged robots and lo and behold, biped was born!
Concept art of Aku and SilaIn the next developer blog, we’ll talk more about how we integrated co-op into the biped experience. Thank you for all the interest in biped and our cute, quirky robots, Aku and Sila!
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Thanks!
- biped Dev Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1071870/biped/