Broken Roads News

Hello from all of us here at Drop Bear Bytes! Been a couple months since we shared an update here (you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram where we post a new screenshot almost every week) so please enjoy this look at what the team have been up to!



First off, we’ve been preparing more of the creatures you’ll encounter in Broken Roads, from the usual domestic and farm animals to WA’s wildlife, and of course some of the more… ‘out there’ inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic future Australia. Here’s our feral pig, modeled by Art Lead Bianca Roux and textured by Lead Environment Artist Sara Laubscher.



We’ve also been revisiting the UI across the board, reworking almost everything in combat from the ground up. Here’s a shot of the team during a recent art review looking at the proposed icons for some of the skills and abilities in Broken Roads. Big fan of the ‘miffed’ icon, personally…



One of our newer devs, Dean Baron, who joined us in November has been diving into improving our quests, XP and level up systems (somewhat essential classics of the RPG genre!) and getting them where they need to be for some exciting things we want to show off a little later this year.



And here we have a spoiler-free look at a very late-game conversation written by our Narrative Director, Leanne Taylor-Giles. This snapshot of a conversation is taken from articy:draft, the narrative design tool we’re using on Broken Roads, and gives a hint at the level of reactivity and choice available to players based upon earlier moral decisions - or immoral decisions, if that’s your thing. Each of the blue, purple, red or yellow nodes corresponds with a quadrant on the moral compass. Grey is an NPC node and green is a standard dialogue option. ‘Fun’ fact: this one point in this conversation is about three times as large as shown here…



And finally, a look at one of the new interiors the team completed. We couldn’t be happier with the leaps forward the art team have made bringing these environments to another level. Scenes are looking better than ever and our newest additions to the art team - Thobile Simelane, 3D Modeler and Kyle Zeeman, Texture artist - are creating beautiful props to populate the world. Once again, credit to our VFX & Technical Artist Ryan Gee for the lighting, VFX and finishing touches that tie it all together.

Thanks for reading!
- The Team at Drop Bear Bytes

We’re wrapping up a very eventful year for the studio as we gear down for the Christmas break. 2022 saw us secure a partnership with Versus Evil, grow our team, exhibit at gamescom and of course up the quality of the art in Broken Roads to levels we never imagined when we started off as a 2D, tile-based game back in 2019.

For this blog we chatted to each of our artists, our level designer and our producer to get a feel for some of their highlights from the back half of the year.



RYAN GEE, VFX & TECHNICAL ARTIST

"Working on set dressing older scenes that have been in a partially unfinished state for as long as several years has been very satisfying, and it's been very rewarding to see how far we've come over the life of the project in terms of quality and art fidelity. Being able to pack details into every corner and fill up open spaces with interesting bits and pieces has in my eyes really helped to bring the narrative we've heard about to life. I'm really excited for players to wander through these places and start to pick up on the stories of the people who live there, not only through the main narrative but through the little stories the environment itself tells.”



“It's been really satisfying seeing how far we've come over the last 3 years, and I'm really proud of the point that we've gotten the game to now, through lots of ups and downs. I'm sure everyone on the project has had their own expectations of what they would like the end result of the game to look like, but it's been really cool to see things reach the level of detail, style, and complexity I'd always hoped we'd be able to achieve (and to be and have been part of getting there!)."



SARA LAUBSCHER, LEAD ENVIRONMENT ARTIST


"As the environment designer for this narrative-based game, I believe in storytelling through world building, so that the player feels immersed in the world and its stories. Because our game has a fixed camera angle, we can really leverage traditional rules of composition in order to lead the player’s eye toward areas of importance within the environment. Especially with the interior scenes that we have been working on recently - I try to design them in such a way that Ryan can leverage light sources to create focal points that can enhance mood and story. It's incredibly rewarding seeing the whole team's art come together in a scene!”



“I have really enjoyed researching Australia in my environment design process. I’ve looked at small town bake sales, underground homes, glow worm caves, Mars terraforming simulators - you name it. My internet history is all over the place. I think that’s my favourite part about our game, there are so many unique aspects to Western Australia, it's cool to try convey them in a way that would make a local go, ‘Oh wow! That looks like my town after the apocalypse!’“



CASSANDRA LEE, CONCEPT ARTIST

“A fun task to work on was concepting the strange sphere that appears as an object of interest in the Merredin Governor’s HQ environment's display cabinet. It was a creative blue sky task that allowed me to be really free with exploring all kinds of intricate details and textures to make this sphere stand out and look special.”



“When thinking about the object from the perspective of how it's going to appear in game, it was important to dial things back a bit and make sure the details where readable from a far distance.”

THOBILE SIMELANE, 3D MODELER

"Seeing all the assets that have been created by the team assembled to generate the designed environments has been such a pleasure to bear witness to. I've enjoyed seeing the models I've helped create come to life. Having come from a film and television background, it has been quite interesting to see how the gaming industry works. The process is similar but different in its own right. I've enjoyed learning this new pipeline.”



“I am currently modeling a macguffin that has challenged me to a satisfying degree and has made me fall deeper in love with this game. I try to make sure the base of my model is exceptionally done so that it makes the following steps much easier to go through, be it the sculpting faze or even the unwrapping stage. The most satisfying part of my job as I have indicated above, is seeing the final product come together. When all the different departments’ work comes all together to form the complete picture is my happy place."

BIANCA ROUX, ART LEAD

"I am incredibly proud of the milestones we have achieved in improving the overall quality of the game. We decided to make the move to full 3D in 2021, and have found that this has benefitted us greatly. 3D models allow for more accurate lighting and shadows and that is clearly evident in this scene of the Governor's HQ.”



“We wanted this scene to feel of importance and adding the great big window behind a large classic desk achieves for a great focal point of a person of power. We are constantly chatting about ideas and how to make the scenes feel more lived in and believable. We like to imagine the characters in the game and how the overall scene would tell their story. Angela Smith is very dignified and has great pride showing off her collectables, whereas if Malcolm Hogan were to become Governor, you would see a great deal of hubris and indifference. This scene is evident of great team work and I am very honoured to be working with such talented artists."



LUKE DORMAN, LEVEL DESIGNER

"Merredin is an interesting level to talk about as its come a long, long way. Myself and Jesse [Moore, Narrative Designer] have talked at length about where to move the buildings around to make them easier for the player to access, what placements of buildings and landmarks make sense and will be seen by the player, and where characters should be standing, sitting, and walking to.”

In this update we’re giving a rundown of the attributes in Broken Roads, the three categories of skills the attributes play into, as well as a brief look at some of the skills derived from them. Please note: we’re in the middle of reworking much of the UI, so the images shown here are not representative of the finished product.

Attributes are the core stats that determine a character’s build. As with many RPG systems we know and love, they determine hit points, movement points, a character’s ability to perform actions based on what attribute that action is associated with, and so on. In Broken Roads, attributes also determine the baseline integer for skills in each tree (or ‘category’, explained below).

We wanted each attribute to be significant both in and out of combat, with skills and abilities to suit the kind of build a player wants to have, or the playstyle they may be going for in any given run through the game. Want to build a charismatic but not too smart mercenary-type with a fixation on serving the greater good? We want that to be completely viable. Or a wily, self-interested merchant who can handle any type of gun with ease but is so weak they can’t fight themselves out of a wet paper bag? Also entirely viable.

THE SIX ATTRIBUTES

Strength (STR)
Affects Action Points, melee and thrown weapon damage (for non-explosive projectiles), lifting heavy objects, bashing down doors, and pretty much anything that involves flexing a bit of muscle.

Agility (AGI)
One for the acrobats and athletes, this is the major determinant of Movement Points, increases accuracy of thrown weapons, and works alongside Strength to determine a character’s base score for Fortitude skills.

Resolve (RES)
This measures how well a character can withstand pain, their success in facing both physical and psychological adversity, and their ability to stay calm under pressure.

Awareness (AWR)
The stat that allows a character to notice things around them, for example improving aim and general use of guns, spotting a camouflaged creature or enemy, and knowing when someone's lying. A character’s Awareness and Resolve scores are added together to determine a character’s base score for Temperance skills.

Intelligence (INT)
Simply put, how smart a character is and how well they apply themselves to support tasks such as first aid, tinkering/repairing things, and of course constructing convincing arguments in dialogue.

Charisma (CHR)
This stat determines how good a character is at talking their way in, through, and out of difficult situations. Charisma can also increase the success chance of numerous dialogue checks. Along with Intelligence, Charisma determines the starting value of a character’s base score for Wisdom skills.

BROKEN ROADS' THREE SKILL CATEGORIES

Fortitude: Strength & Agility

Fortitude skills include Melee Mastery (bonus damage, accuracy, critical hit chance and Initiative while wielding a melee weapon), Barbican (shrug off damage like a brick shithouse) and Opportunist (help yourself to a free swipe at enemies doing a runner).



Wisdom: Intelligence & Charisma

Wisdom skills include Tinker (use swanky devices, pick locks, add additional utility slots in combat), Biology (increases the amount healed by restorative items, and at higher levels grants a chance not to consume a restorative item on use), as well as Leadership (set an example for those around you, granting Initiative and other bonuses in combat, as well as unique dialogue options at certain moments throughout the game).



Temperance: Resolve & Awareness

Temperance skills include Shooting Mastery(not only improving how handy you are with a gun, but grants various passive abilities as you increase the skill), Drunken Master (grants various bonuses obtained from consuming the different kinds of beverages on offer in the game) and Flow State (after two consecutive ranged attacks that hit their target, the character receives a bonus to accuracy on each attack until they miss).



ASSIGNING ATTRIBUTE POINTS

At the start of the game, you will have a total of 40 points to allocate across these 6 attributes - it’s a point-buy system, so no dice rolls during character creation. Then, each level up, characters gain 1 attribute point and 5 skill points. Just as at character creation, increasing attribute points during level up also increments each skill in the skill categories mentioned above.

There are five skills in each category, and each has a score calculated by the sum of the two attributes that make up the category. This score is the minimum a skill of that category can be - thus in this example below (base of 11 in Strength +1 as a Hired Gun bonus, and base of 12 in Agility +1 as a Hired Gun bonus), all of the player’s Fortitude skills would start from a baseline value of 25.

Similarly, Resolve and Awareness make up Temperance, and this character has 3 RES and 6 AWR, making for a baseline of 7 for all Temperance skills, and 4 INT and 6 CHA for a baseline of 10 in Wisdom.

Note that the Opportunist and Shooting Mastery skills receive Hired Gun bonuses as well, granting +5 and +10 respectively during character creation:



In January we’re going to do a blog focused on each skill, each derived stat, and the various active and passive abilities granted as your character progresses. We’ll share those details with you very soon, along with - hopefully! - our new UI designs and artwork.

Things can - and probably will - change all the way up to launch as we test and balance, so don’t be surprised if the actual values/numbers/skill names used in this blog aren’t the same when the game releases.

Thanks for reading!

- The Drop Bear Bytes team

L-R: Marigold Bartlett, Leanne Taylor-Giles, Wren Brier and Simon Boxer

Well, this year's Melbourne International Games Week, GCAP and PAX are over. Most of the Australian Drop Bear Bytes team were in attendance, with Narrative Director Leanne Taylor-Giles hosting two panels with Marigold Bartlett, the Art Director at Ghost Pattern (who just released Wayward Strand), Wren Brier (Creative Director of Unpacking), and Simon Boxer (Creative Director at Twice Different, who made Ring of Pain and are working on The Dungeon Experience), one at GCAP and one during PAX.

We’ll post the video of the PAX panel to our YouTube channel as soon as we’ve done some cleanup and minor editing.

Drop Bear Bytes has been a fully distributed studio since its founding in early 2019, and much like gamescom in August, this was the first time some of the team had ever met in person.


L-R: Dean Baron, James Giles, Leanne Taylor-Giles and Eloise Campbell

There were many excellent panels and talks which the team attended (see the list below) and many of these will be uploaded in the coming months (although you may need to pay for access...) - but the highlight of PAX Australia is always the indie area.
It's always great to see what smaller studios have been up to, and the indie area shows off just the best of Australia. This year there were so many amazing games, each with their own unique identity.



It was great to see World War I survival horror CONSCRIPT on display again. Drop Bear Bytes was next to them at gamescom, and they ended up next to the fine people of Innchanted at PAX.



The competitive-minigame-’em-up ShapeVS was always getting a lot of attention throughout the show. They need to watch out or someone’s going to poach their developer…



Ricochet Rodeo, a PVP platform shooter with strong Nidhogg vibes, was another one drawing the crowds - that’s our Lead Unity Developer Amos with the blue backpack.

Several studios took memorable approaches to marketing, from Godfeather’s “Feed the boids” seed packets:



To Bustin’ and their “roll wrapping service” (sadly, no one had any toilet paper to spare):



And, of course, everyone’s (Dean’s) favourite, Duck with Helmet from Knight Crawlers:



Check out the full article here!

After an excellent event in 2021, Drop Bear Bytes were again invited to showcase Broken Roads this year as part of the Melbourne International Games Week ‘22 Steam Event.

We held two live streams - an AMA with our Australian/North American team members and a roundtable with our South African/European art team - and participated in Death n Dirt, a panel on pre-, mid- and post-apocalyptic games.

On top of this, our Narrative Director, Leanne Taylor-Giles, hosted a GCAP 2022 Narrative Design Q&A titled ‘Storytelling: Beyond Words’ earlier today, and is moderating a PAX Australia Panel titled ‘Making and Breaking Connections: The Art of Betrayal’ on Friday, October 7th.

We recorded our MIGW streams and have uploaded them to our YouTube channel, along with the ‘Death n Dirt’ panel below. Both of our streams have the talks fully timestamped if you want to skim through for a specific topic.

Broken Roads team AMA for the MIGW 22 Steam event: https://youtu.be/DH1dyV4grSE

Broken Roads Art Team MIGW 2022 Steam event: https://youtu.be/Ic-ugrT2itk

Death N Dirt Panel: https://youtu.be/DRY63zjVed0

Check out the full developer blog here: https://www.brokenroadsgame.com/dev-blog/broken-roads-featured-in-the-melbourne-international-games-week-2022-steam-event