Mictlan: An Ancient Mythical Tale News

The Arquebus

The matchlock arquebus is a classic weapon of the conquest, with ample documented evidence that indicates its early arrival to the American continent.

According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Hernán Cortés used these weapons to incentivize other Spaniards to join his expedition, which suggests that a cache of these weapons was readied for the expedition towards the lands of the Yucatan. The same expedition would go into the Mesoamerican territory and face the Mexica Empire.

Contrary to common belief, most times the arquebus was (not literally) a double edge sword; though its reach and power surpassed by far the bows and atlatl, its reload time was slower, allowing at least 20 arrows to be shooted and there was always the possibility that the powder would be ruined by the humid weather.

Here we present a design for a weapon you will find in Mictlan. You will be able to choose between a more nimble and silent weapon such as a bow or an atlatl, or one that is far more lethal, although slower, such as an arquebus.

If you're enjoying seeing how Mictlan is developing and you would like to see more of our game, please support us by registering on Kickstarter and follow Mictlan: An Ancient Mythical Tale!

Priest of Mictlantecuhtli

As you have seen in our previous posts, Mexica priests dressed in very simple clothes for their daily chores, using maxtla (loincloth) and xicollis (nightgowns), reserving the extravagant ornaments for the festivities to celebrate deities.

For this priest of Mictlantecuhtli we opted for a more fantastic approach, although based on our previous studies of pre-Hispanic clothing and iconography: as you know by now, in Mictlan we always strive for a balance between fantasy and historical accuracy.

Legends, myths, facts, history: Mictlan has it all! We're aiming at including in our game the most incredible stories, and we will continue updating you with news, concept arts, sneak&peeks of our creative process, so make sure to follow us on our social media channels to stay updated!

Facial animations

We are currently testing numerous facial animation techniques with a small group of voice actors.

What you see here is all done manually, adjusting each muscle of the face, moving it accordingly to the expressions and speech of the dialogue.

Another technique we are testing is full performance capture, which means we can record body and face expressions as well as audio in real-time, this method is extremely difficult and costly so, until we launch our Kickstarter campaign, we can only proceed to create most of the face animations manually.

These are just experiments, we're constantly trying to achieve better results in order to arrive to our finalized version of the game in the future years.

Anyway, we're more than happy with our work so far, what do you think?

Take a look at the video and let us know!

[h3]Want to see more?

Want to see our first official trailer?[/h3]

We will present it to our community at the launch of our Kickstarter campaign.
But in order to launch the campaign, we need at least 20k people to register to the page. It literally takes a minute to do so, but it would mean the world to us.

[h3]Mictlan community, help us out![/h3]

Mexica priests #2

Did you know that the Mexica priests dyed their temples red using the blood of the sacrifices made for the gods?

The priestly garments worn during the celebrations of the festivities dedicated to gods were varied and complex, but during the days when their tutelary deities were not honored by all the common people, the priests dressed in a more humble way, with a xicolli or nightgown, painting their body with black and smearing their hair with blood, then proceeded to clean themselves every night, except if they were performing some penance, in which fasting and sacrifices ordered them to maintain that aspect for days or weeks.

Check out our previous posts about Mexica priests!

In Mictlan we constantly seek to create a faithful vision of the pre-Hispanic world, as well as maintaining a balance with the fantastic elements that make every video game a masterpiece.

What do you think, folks?

It would help us immensely if you decide to sign up to our Kickstarter campaign.
In order to launch the campaign, we need at least 20k people to register to the page. It literally takes a minute to do so, but it would mean the world to us.

Tezcatlipoca: work in progress

Today we want to show you the progress we're making on the body paint of the god Tezcatlipoca, the lord of the obsidian mirror.

This design for the deity of the night sky combines the traditional black painting and the yellow face bands with some ornaments inspired by one of the avatars of the god Tepeyollotl, heart of the mountain.

In an abstract way, and in combination with the fantastic aspects of our game, the yellow ornaments of the body simulate the jaguar skin.

Check out our previous posts about Tezcatlipoca!

Our amazing team is constantly working to bring to life Mictlan's mighty characters.