Hell Of An Office News

Hey demons and office workers alike! This is Santi, your devilish 3D artist and technical conjurer, responsible for weaving chaos into the design here at Hell of an Office. Grab your coffee (or lava, whichever fuels you best) and gather 'round as we delve into the infernal construction secrets behind our tormented buildings. The importance of these buildings lies not only in their aesthetic appeal but also in their role in shaping the overall environment and setting the stage for the players. They serve as the visual cornerstone, immersing players into the surreal realm of offices submerged in lava.

BLAM! Welcome to the Infernal construction site! 🔥




Visual Trickery and Devilish Details

Ever peered through those lava-submerged buildings and spied on the infernal offices inside? Well, they're not quite what they seem:



These buildings are cleverly disguised as two-dimensional planes. We actually use devilishly clever cubemaps to create an illusion of depth in these seemingly 3D spaces.


Modular Mayhem

In "Hell of an Office," we cooked up a neat trick to build our infernal structures; it's all about flexibility and efficiency.

Picture this: we've a cool system that lets us piece together our demonic buildings like Lego sets, swapping pieces at our whim. This means we're not limited to a single design but have the freedom to mix things up to match the vibe we're aiming for in a particular level. And guess what? It’s like magic! This system definitely makes our lives easier and makes our game more versatile; it allows us to play around with various looks and setups for our buildings, making each level feel like a fresh and devilishly dynamic adventure.



This system serves as the pivotal cornerstone, transforming our design approach from the micro-level (building structures) to the macro level (enhancing the entire game design). It streamlines our entire development process, increases the efficiency of our level design and thereby, enhances the gameplay experience.

The small-scale impact of this system echoes grandly, allowing us to scale our creativity, turning each level into a dynamic and devilishly dynamic adventure. It's the game design equivalent of starting with bricks and ending up with an intricate, awe-inspiring castle—a process that not only facilitates our building tasks but extends throughout the entire design, setting the stage for a more immersive and engaging game.

Blueprint Alchemy

In our fiery realm of creation, we've unlocked a game-changing secret: Unreal blueprints.

These magical tools work like instant skyscraper spellbooks. With a flick and a click, we summon buildings of different heights faster than you can imagine. These blueprints let us stack and shuffle our infernal structures effortlessly, unleashing a world of dynamic and ever-changing office landscapes, keeping the gameplay endlessly fresh and filled with surprises.



Alright, folks!
We are very excited about everything we've been working on to achieve epic results in this world of Hell of an Office that subverts office norms in the most creative and devilish way possible.

Stay tuned as we continue to share behind-the-scenes details while we keep cooking up incredible things.

Summoning creativity from the depths of the inferno,
Santi 😈

HellO valued employees!

It is the season to be spooky 😈 and we wanted to commemorate the occasion with a (OBLIGATORY READING MATERIAL) featuring a brief recap of the most-scary-spooky moments during phase 01 of Hell of an Office’s development.

Throughout the development of the first stage of Early Access, many frightening incidents occurred. To clarify once again, this is our first game ever and there are only six of us, so we often need to improvise a lot. Without any more excuses, here are our top 10 most scary moments from Hell of an Office:

Removing the Jump ButtonYes! Hell of an Office used to have a dedicated button exclusively for jumping on platforms. However, early players were getting confused about when to jump or dash, and after weeks of discussions, we decided to remove it from the game. That's why now you only do rocket jumps and dashes.

Remember... gotta be faster than the devil if you want to escape hell! 🏃‍♂️💨



43 Studios didn't existWe signed a publishing deal even before 43 Studios was founded. Yeah, we didn't even have a company when we were negotiating with the publishers…. 📝🤝

Forbidden Stapley Image 🚭 This mischievous smoking Stapley render, this cosmic horror of an image, would have increased our game’s PEGI rating to the +18 category :



Phone lost = Project locked Our project repository got locked because our administrator needed to verify the enter code with his phone, but he lost it😱

pd: No need to worry, he's successfully recovered his phone! 😅

Running out of Hell (of an office beanies) This year, we went to Pax East and, in addition to showcasing our game, we brought exclusive merch: black candles, sacrifice coloring books, HellO mugs, and the crown jewel: Hell of an Office Beanies.🤠 We brought over 300 units, and we ran out of stock by the second day of Pax East 2023.

Tiktok 3D Community BacklashDuring our first marketing campaign, we posted a series of videos on TikTok explaining how some parts of the game were made. One of these Tiktoks was the creation of our sushi stapler. Here, we explained the steps to create a skin for the game, from concept, 3d modeling, texturing, to implementation in the game. We decided to skip some of the more boring aspects…
The feedback we received?: “43 Studios doesn’t know how to do ‘retopo’ (the process of creating a lower poly version of an asset).” 😤 📱

We received many comments wondering why we didn't optimize our game. Our favorite one was: “This would blow up someone’s laptop.”



The Haunting Dance of Animated Arms Ever had that spine-chilling moment in our game where things got a little... eerie? Check out this spine-tingling bug where one of our characters decided to break free from the ordinary and twist reality! Witness a bone-chilling glitch where arms take on a life of their own in a bone-afide terrifying yet hilarious twist! 💀🦴



Office Employee Dialogue System 🗣️ Ok, we’re cheating with this one because it’s something we recently worked on; however, it’s still scary. Nowadays that we are focusing a lot on the narrative aspects of the game, we need characters to tell the story.


The Burned Office Workers have always been in the shadows as side characters. They portray all the employees who came before you and got trapped inside HellO, eventually transforming into these things. Usually, you could spot them in the distance, serving as decoration in our hellish arenas, but now you will be able to meet them, talk to them, and interact. This will allow you to discover lore, quests and more details about HellO.

Additionally, we’re developing an interactive animation and dialogue system to make this fantasy come alive:



Thanks for paying attention! If you liked our blog, let us know; if not, tell us too.
See you in our next blog and have fun this Halloween season! 👻

Dear beloved employees,

We have successfully localized Hell of an Office for China!

Hoping to provide a more comfortable working environment for our employees... Like I said... HellO has always highly valued the experiences of our staff!🔥

See you in the game!

HELLo, 43 Studios here!

We’re summoning Phase 2 straight from hell and we wanted to share a glimpse of what’s coming out of that portal to the most hellish office of all:

• Hell of an Office is becoming bigger 🔥
  
  We are adding a narrative layer to the game that will allow you to delve deeper into the world we have created. You'll have the opportunity to uncover the secrets, lore, and missions that each floor of this hellish corporation that is HellO, will reveal:
  
  The facilities of HellO hide many secrets, sidequests and characters.
  
  You will be able to explore the various facilities and floors of the HellO Corporation, each with a unique thematic angle, meet new characters, and strengthen your bonds with familiar faces like Mr. Stapley and Stan Morningstar himself:
  

This will provide a more enriching experience by deepening into worldbuilding through a humorous narrative and giving players a stronger sense of characters and progression.

• You can take your time to uncover the secrets of the hellish corporation that owns your soul (and ours, send help!) or, if you don't feel like it, you can skip it all and just go on to speedrun the classic levels.
  
  
• We are focusing on accessibility updates (Don't tell Mr. Morningstar about this, please 🙏), fixing quality of life issues, difficulty, balancing and visibility improvements.
  

We are ensuring that we stay true to the game we want to offer, while also creating a more welcoming experience that will definitely keep you on your toes.

• And finally, what most people have been asking for: a new community tool to help players interact, share, and compete with each other more easily. These tools will allow players to suffer together! 😈
  

Stay tuned for more information coming very soon.

Your support means the world to us, we will see you in hell!

HellO valued employees,

As part of our hellish family values, we believe in sharing - especially when it involves a dive into the infernal depths of our creation process. Remember the Sushi Stapler skin that you've been wielding since 0.3.0? The skin was made thanks to a community vote on our Discord. If you've yet to join us, you're missing out on a hell of a good time. Join today and let your screams be heard!

Today, we're peeling back the layers to reveal the origin of this sushi-inspired masterpiece, born from the twisted mind of a loyal minion just like you. Here is the image that inspired it all:


So, where did the journey begin? With an array of sushi design possibilities, we choose a shrimp and Nigiri version. After all, in the burning depths of our headquarters, shrimps are the little devils of the sea. And it's about time you started seeing them the same way... or else. We ended up with a stapler made of rice, shrimp, and other small touches like chopsticks, soy sauce bowl, and a wooden tray. You can see it start to take form in our first sketch here:


From there, we plunged into the fiery pit of the blocking process, making sure every piece's volume adhered to the rigging in our existing animations. We crafted the sushi elements, sculpted our little devil - sorry, shrimp - then covered it in rice and maki. The sight was so appetizing we had to take a sushi break, because who can resist when the design looks this delectable?

Having satiated our sushi cravings (and throwing in some Mochi dessert for good measure), we returned to our craft, modeling the surfaces like the soy sauce bowl, the chopsticks, and the wooden tray. Being the perfectionists we are, we even positioned the elements so that during a rocket jump, the maki seems to be taking a tantalizing dip into the soy sauce. Diabolical, isn't it?



With the initial sculpting of the high poly models completed, we then moved on to retopology - a fancy term for trimming down polygons to ensure our game didn't send your devices straight into a lake of lava. Next came UV mapping for all our models, setting the stage for the texturing process. Here, we added a cascade of colors and materials to our models. We began with baking, a technique where we projected the details of a high-density mesh onto its lower-density version, preserving all the devilish details while keeping our polygon count in check.

Texturing saw the introduction of organic touches like rice grains, shrimp finishes, and soy sauce. Not to mention the details from the stapler's pattern to the porcelain sheen on the soy sauce bowl. Our palette was inspired by the essence of sushi - the whites of rice, the oranges of shrimp and salmon, and a dash of wasabi green.


And with that, our animations were linked to the new model, and voila! The Sushi Stapler was ready to cause havoc in the Hell of an Office. But enough of our behind-the-scenes babble. You've lingered here long enough, don't you think? Time to get back to what you do best: enduring the torments of the office!

With infernal affection,

HellO Demon Resources Department