DevLog – Storytelling In a Retro Horror Universe
[p]Hello everyone![/p][p]Lock and load, smash the lights, and brace yourself – HYPERVIOLENT is 20% off during the Steam Summer Sale! If you've been waiting to dive into the pixelated chaos, now’s the perfect time to unleash hell.[/p][p]And while you're blasting your way through the corridors, we thought it’d be a great time to pull back the curtain and talk a bit about the game's development and its technical background. A detailed summarizing video can be found below the article.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Inspired by the original System Shock & Azrael's Tear, we tell stories in HYPERVIOLENT using a combination of visual elements, sonic clues, and lore-driven bread crumbs to paint a picture for the player.[/p][p][/p][p]Throughout the game world are data-pads and terminals, each containing logs left by the occupants of COMMODUS 27-C. Of course this is nothing new in the horror genre, but we try to bring a truly hand-crafted touch to it. The entries span routine maintenance notes, personal diary fragments, and last-minute distress calls, creating a layered timeline of station life before everything went wrong. Many characters have unique plots that intertwine with each other, and with the game map's pathing and obstacles.[/p][p][/p][p]![]()
[/p][p]All of the game's text is saved in multi-language json format, possibly even allowing for players to mod the game in the future. We hope the many logs sprawled throughout the game world will fully immerse the player, as well as reward them with easter eggs, video game, and literary references---- and maybe even a Steam Achievement for finding them all ;)
The next part of telling a story is creating a convincing visual world. The style HYPERVIOLENT lives in is a sharp 90s aesthetic, somewhere between the pulsing pixels of the immersive sim genre, and a PS1-esque rough polygonal jitter. That deliberate visual middle-ground lets us celebrate two eras of retro tech at once. Grungy, visceral, outline-less pixel art is used as much as possible, for textures, weapons, pickups, enemies, and all of the player's roto-scoped hand animations. This gives HYPERVIOLENT its own visual language.[/p][p][/p][p]![]()
For the environments, as well as for doo-dads and machinery aboard the COMMODUS station, we employ low-poly true 3D. Moving parts, gears, valves, and flickering monitors all reinforce the sense of a once working facility. Our maps are brush based, created in Trenchbroom, and then run through a custom visibility bake in blender, which removes any polygons outside the gameplay area, leaving only the visible faces.[/p][p]
All of our textures are point filtered, which gives a crisp pixelly look, over the blurry look of traditionally mipmapped or bileanar filtered textures. Lowering polygon count is also very important, as HYPERVIOLENT was built in a scripting language primarily intended for 2D. A bold choice on our part, but we believe limitation sometimes creates the most interesting art.
Take a look below at some behind-the-scenes footage of crafting models, map-wireframes, and implementing game lore.[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
The next part of telling a story is creating a convincing visual world. The style HYPERVIOLENT lives in is a sharp 90s aesthetic, somewhere between the pulsing pixels of the immersive sim genre, and a PS1-esque rough polygonal jitter. That deliberate visual middle-ground lets us celebrate two eras of retro tech at once. Grungy, visceral, outline-less pixel art is used as much as possible, for textures, weapons, pickups, enemies, and all of the player's roto-scoped hand animations. This gives HYPERVIOLENT its own visual language.[/p][p][/p][p]
All of our textures are point filtered, which gives a crisp pixelly look, over the blurry look of traditionally mipmapped or bileanar filtered textures. Lowering polygon count is also very important, as HYPERVIOLENT was built in a scripting language primarily intended for 2D. A bold choice on our part, but we believe limitation sometimes creates the most interesting art.
Take a look below at some behind-the-scenes footage of crafting models, map-wireframes, and implementing game lore.[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]