Only Lead Can Stop Them News

Attention, soldiers!

[h3]ONLY LEAD CAN STOP THEM IS HERE![/h3]

We are very happy to be able to say that the full version of Only Lead Can Stop Them has been released today. Our team is celebrating as we look back on years of hard work that has led to this day. We started developing this game over three years ago from very humble beginnings. As more of the game took shape our ambitions grew since we wanted to create something great for the players to enjoy. Today we have fulfilled that vision of a great game in the style of the classic 90s shooters we grew up loving.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]What Awaits on the Battlefield:[/h3]

• Powerful Weapons: Wield a devastating arsenal of 10 weapons, including machine guns, shotguns, explosives, and rifles.
  
• Fast-Paced Action: Only Lead Can Stop Them is inspired by classic ‘90s shooters, and sprinkled with modern features.
  
• Supernatural Twist: This time, the Spanish Civil War goes beyond the human conflict - face off against mysterious occult enemies and monstrous creatures.

[h3]Get Only Lead Can Stop Them now:[/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1909100/Only_Lead_Can_Stop_Them/

As we celebrate our success, we also want to pay homage to the heroes of the Spanish Civil War in remembrance of their sacrifice and bravery.

Dan Pettersson
Founder and CEO of Warcry Interactive

Attention, soldiers!

Prepare to stand your ground, soldier. The republic needs you.

[h3]ONLY LEAD CAN STOP THEM IS LAUNCHING ON DECEMBER 9, 2024![/h3]



Step into the boots of a soldier in the Spanish Civil War, fighting to defend the republic from opposing fascist forces. Armed with grit, courage, and a powerful arsenal, you'll take on three epic campaigns spanning 30 intense levels. From the eerie depths of ancient catacombs to the blood-soaked trenches of the battlefield, every location is teeming with danger, secrets, and the promise of glory.

[h3]What Awaits on the Battlefield:[/h3]

• Powerful Weapons: Wield a devastating arsenal of 10 weapons, including machine guns, shotguns, explosives, and rifles.
  
• Fast-Paced Action: Only Lead Can Stop Them is inspired by classic ‘90s shooters, and sprinkled with modern features.
  
• Supernatural Twist: This time, the Spanish Civil War goes beyond the human conflict - face off against mysterious occult enemies and monstrous creatures.

Mark your calendars for December 9, 2024, and get ready to take on this intense, action-packed adventure!

Militias! Welcome back to the fifth devlog for Only Lead Can Stop Them.

Today we are delve into the background of one of the central pieces of artwork in the game which is the animated character portraits of the male and female protagonists of the game, also called the Miliciano and the Miliciana. These are not names of persons of course but rather they are the Spanish words that was used to describe many of the soldiers that fought against the fascist during the Spanish civil war. It can be translated as militia man and militia woman.

From the very beginning of the games development, I had the firm idea that the game needed to have a animated character portrait that showed the emotional expressions and current health condition of the player. For me it has always been a mystery why this type of feature was abandoned by the game industry and only showed up in a handful of games in the mid 90s since it is a very simple feature that creates a great emotional impact on the player.

The origins of the character portraits can be traced back to fantasy RPGs of the eighties but the first use of the feature in a shooter was made by ID-software in the game Catacomb 3D. It reached its peek popularity in the following games Wolfenstein 3d and Doom in the following years. After that a simplified, less animated variant of the animated portrait was used in the game Quake and a few years later an even more simplified and subtle use of the feature found itself into John Romero’s game Daikatana. Daikatana became the animated character portraits swan song and after that the feature was rarely seen in a shooter game.

Perhaps the feature became too much associated with the game Doom, and since all games that came after Doom struggled with being labeled a mere Doom-clone it could have been that dropping one of the main features was necessary to differentiate and have the game be seen on its own merits.

Nowadays the association isn’t very clear anymore since both the Wolfenstein- and the Doom-franchises didn’t have an animated character portrait in their many sequels. In Boomer shooters the feature has seen a big renaissance and start to become an almost expected feature of a great shooter.

During most of the development of Only Lead Can Stop Them we only had a male character. The original prototype version imagined the main character as a dark-haired fellow with a strong square jaw and slightly darker suntanned skin. I had made this rendition in a hurry and at that point in time I wasn’t that good at pixel art. My main skill is that of a technical artist so this could be called programmer art. Also, the idea for the character felt simple and uninspired.



Lucky for us we found a great pixel artist called Johannes Broman, that would go on to make the majority of the game’s artwork. Johannes reimagining of the main character was the first big step on the road to make the game feel like it was taking shape and started to feel more than a mere prototype. I gave him a lot of creative freedom and he took the design in a completely different direction that felt expressive, original and iconic. The male protagonist was now a redhead with captivating gaze and instead of radiating larger than life strength he was more relatable and frailer as an ordinary human.



Johannes thereafter made a bunch of enemy types and textures as well as different sprits for props and most of the game quickly took shape. However due to various reasons he was unable to stay on for the full duration of the project and went on to other endeavors. A few things were left to be created such as certain enemy types and bosses. I also felt that it was important early on to have a female playable character. This wasn’t mainly motivated by some superficial will to pander to different demographics in order to maximize profit. Rather I felt that that the telling of this historical period would ring false without the recognition of all the bravery and sacrifice displayed by the great multitude of women that fought in the Spanish Civil War. Some of the most iconic images of the war is different portraits of female soldiers getting ready for battle. To some extent the war can be seen also as being about the role of women in society and the fight to preserve their new won right to vote.

The development of the female protagonist would however come to be one of the most divisive issues. Most other aspects of the game the team had a pretty easy time coming to a consensus on how things should be and compromises where rarely necessary to be made. With Johannes Broman out of the picture I had been left doing a lot of the remaining artwork for the game and my skills where growing. I tried my hand at creating the female protagonist and after a lot of thinking I came up with a rendition that imagined her as a very beautiful blond woman. I was inspired by a real life miliciana that was a beautiful blond woman. One of the critics of this version was centered on the fact that it felt weird to imagine a Spanish woman with blond hair. In truth most milicianas were dark haired or brown haired. However, people came from all over the world to support the fight in Spain, so it's not necessarily meant that the female protagonist is supposed to be Spanish. It’s more left to the players own interpretation.



Most of the team wanted to see a rework of the female character since they saw it as expressing the wrong traits. When they imagined a strong female character, they imagined something completely different. Some went as far as saying that my portrayal of her was misogynistic and argued that it would hurt the game saying that she looked more like a bimbo or housewife. The argument however for this wasn’t in my opinion very convincing at all but rather spoke to how much culture had imbedded preconceived ideas of gender in them that in them self was misogynistic. Having studied history at the university a lot of my studies has centered on questions of gender and how ideals of gender has been portrayed in culture thru out history. One such aspect is the fact that strong women has been mostly portrayed in culture as being darkhaired and expressing masculine trait or being associated with foreigners or minority groups. At the same time the idea of the perfect feminine woman has mostly been a blonde, white woman with motherly and frail traits often being a housewife.

In my defense of my version of the female character I made the point that these old patterns are very much a problem today and that my portrayal of her was meant to show that a woman can be strong without losing femininity. The fact that she reminds people of their idea of a housewife or barbie or photo-model or whatever was part of it because when you play as this character and the woman is making bad ass stuff shooting and blowing things up it would create reflection in people by the juxtaposition. Also, I felt that as a character I wanted this woman to be an idealist. I wanted her to be a person that choose to fight for what she believed was right and for that to be possible there needed to be an easy option for her that she rejects. I imagined therefore her to have the option of being like a Marilyn Monroe character or a rich man’s housewife, but her ideals were so strong that she rejected this role in life and in favor of living hard but righteous.

I didn’t completely win the argument. Even though some of the team could better understand my motivation and point of view it still remained that they felt that the audience wouldn’t understand the message and also that my artwork didn’t have the same quality as the male portrait.

One of the team members offered a prototype where the female character would mimic the male character looking almost like a twin redhead woman with only slightly different features. I rejected this idea as being boring. I didn’t see the point with having two nearly identical characters. The only good reason to have more than one character is that they feel different to play, not that they on paper technically has a different gender.



I conceded to a compromise. We would find another artist to make the female character, but I would still be able to tell the message I wanted to tell.

In order to find this artist, we held a small competition that resulted in the winner becoming the artist responsible for the creation of the character. Thereafter Nora Mattsson got to work and her imagination resulted in an interesting character that felt different from the male protagonist but also expressed a lot of emotions.



We tried different hair styles for the character, including a rendition of her as a blonde. However, at this point I felt that the right look for this character was the dark haired version. For some reason the blond hair looked more like a wig as if the face didn’t match.



In the end the rendition of the female character differed from what I had originally imagined and the path the creative process took saw us abandoning my vision and the message it entailed. However the most important goal of creating a nice piece of artwork that felt like it belonged in the game was achieved and in the end I wouldn’t want to change the character a bit.



Recently we had an event where we let an audience play the game and I observed people of all different ages, genders and orientations play the game and I was curious of what character they chose to play. From what I saw it was very mixed. Maybe as many as half of the men chose to play as the female protagonist and it seemed that more than half of the women chose to play as the male protagonist. In the end I believe that games are about taking a short vacation from who we are and for many it can be exciting to imagine being of a different gender for a short while. Giving the player this choice of fantasy adds to the overall experience.

Until Next Time

I hope you enjoyed this background of how the player characters were developed. We hope to give you more exciting stories down the line of current and upcoming features.

I’ll see you in the next devlog

- Dan Pettersson, creative director and tech artist


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1909100/Only_Lead_Can_Stop_Them/

Militias! Welcome back to the fourth devlog for Only Lead Can Stop Them.

This time we will take a look at the background for one of the more iconic enemies of the
game which is called the CAPIROTE. It’s one of the first enemies that I conjured when the
idea for the game that would become OLCST started to take shape. The game takes a lot of
inspiration from different aspects of Spanish culture and the rich history of Spain. One of the
important events in history that has shaped Spanish culture is the notorious Spanish
Inquisition. For a lot of people when they think of The Spanish Inquisition it mostly reminds
them of a famous sketch by Monty Pyton. When we first let people test the demo of the
game people would blast thru a lot of enemies armed with guns just to turn a corner to see a
caped magician throw a skull shaped cloud of poison at them. They would often make the
comment:

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”



Some would also joke regarding historical authenticity and say:
“Well how do you know that there weren’t any wizards casting fire balls and skull clouds
during the Spanish Civil War! Are you history professor?!”

It’s definitely an enemy that spices up what would otherwise be a bit of a mundane
environment if it only was filled with bullet and guns like any ordinary war would. It’s
something very satisfying we think to be able to dodge certain death from a hug projectile
only to return fire and having the Capirote disappear in the style of a knock off Obi-Wan
Kenobi.



The inspiration for the capirote comes from several places. One such is different horror
movies like the Spanish film The blind dead and the Italian The red monks. Pulp horror in
books and film from Spain and Italy often featured different occult priest with covered faces
making satanic rituals involving the sacrifice of many naked women often with heavy
makeup and even heavier boobs. It was theme as common for a time as the sexy vampire.
Some of the horrors have a historical background being that many priest that performed the
various tortures and executions of the inquisition had robes that covered their faces with a
hood. Long after the Inquisition had ended it was common to see hooded priest participate
in performing public executions. Many priests of different brotherhoods until this day wear
similar clothes and participate in rituals involving the display of human skulls. Hooded priests
of different sorts have in various ways become associated with the fear of death.

The Capirote in the game should be seen as a homage to the Spanish culture and the
enticing fantasy of horror that has inspired people thru out the ages.
Until Next Time

I hope you enjoyed this background of one of the many enemies in the game. We hope to
give you more exciting stories down the line of current and upcoming features.

I’ll see you in the next devlog

- Dan Pettersson, creative director and tech artist

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1909100/Only_Lead_Can_Stop_Them/

Militias! Welcome back to the third devlog for Only Lead Can Stop Them.

We just got back from a local event in Gothenburg where we let a few local game devs
commenting on the current state of our game and bounce a few ideas over some upcoming
features that’s in the pipeline. We where happy to hear about how some commented on
improved game feel and specially how some weapons feels very satisfying. Several of these
game devs have tried a couple of versions of the game and can compare their early game
test two years ago and one of the recuring comment was that the rifle had gone from being
forgettable to becoming their favorite weapon to use. It prompted me to want to share
some of the development history for the rifle.



In the early days of the game development it was decided that a game that takes place in the
Spanish Civil War needs to have a focus on a rifle for one of the main weapons. Rifles was a
very common weapon at the time making up the bulk of the arsenal of the worlds armies.
When the war broke out both sides of the conflict sought to arm themselves by
supplementing the divided arsenal with guns imported from abroad. As such there were
plenty of different rifles used during the war.

The rifle that is featured in the game is based on a variant of the French Lebel 1886 rifle
model. Of the more than a dozen rifle models used during the war several had been
designed to use the 8 mm Lebel rifle cartridge which makes the Lebel a good representation
of the standard rifle at the time.

When designing a weapon for a game there are a couple of different aspects to consider.
One of these is the need to have weapon stand out from the rest and for it to offer a unique
experience compared to the rest of the arsenal. Since we wanted there to be fast shooting
weapons in the game like the sub-machine gun and the heavy machinegun we wanted the
rifle to differ by having a slower rate of fire. This also serves as realism and immersion in the
time period since a bolt action rifle wasn’t easy to operate at a fast pace with any
meaningful accuracy.

The graphical artist Johannes Broman got to work and made the design with the detailed
animation of the player handling the action of bolt and raising the gun to take aim. The
shooting animation showed a very powerful punch and it all came together for a very nice
visual delight. Early on it reminded me to some extent of the very iconic weapons animation
of the shotgun in the original Doom.



The rifle was later developed further to also be featured with different animation with the
rifle grenade weapon.



What few people know however is that the rifle weapon was originally imagined having a
bayonet that could be fitted at the end. Animations was made for this, and the idea was that
the player would be able to alternate between having the bayonet on or off and would use a
secondary fire key to do melee attacks. There had even been the idea that the rifle could be
stuck in wooden walls at a missed strike and an animation for pulling the rifle out was made.



This could have been a neat feature but in the end this feature was scrapped for two
reasons. Main reason is that it made the controls more complex than we wanted to. The
second reason is that the knife looked better when animated and we didn’t want it to lose
its usefulness.

The rifle had a slow rate of fire but was one of the deadliest guns in the game. That is to say
if you were able to aim with it. The earliest iterations of the game had a delay of more than
one second from when the player clicked to fire to when the gun actually went. Many times,
the enemy had time to move out of the way. This was due to the detailed animation of the
player lifting the rifle and carefully aiming. To some this made the gun feel different and
some even liked the additional challenge that the rifle offered. Many players however
couldn’t be bothered with the hassle and opted to fire many bullet from the smg instead.

It was obvious that we had a problem here. One of the weapons we hoped would be a
center piece of the game was being passed over, so we had to fix it. We started by testing a
faster animation pace. The faster switch between sprites looked out of place however. The
next thing we did was to drop frames from the animation removing most of the lifting and
aiming of the gun. Now the gun instantly fired when the player pressed the button. And with
a few tweaks further the animation had a different feel. The more sudden raising of the gun,
when removing the gradual raising at aiming, created a feeling of the rifle having a more
powerful knock back.



In the end we kept most of the animation that made the rifle a slow paced weapon since the
animation of the bolt action between shots still slows it down. We had however balanced
the need for graphical impressiveness with the players need for responsive controls and as a
result the rifle had become one of the best looking weapons and one of the best sources of
game feel.

[h3]Until Next Time[/h3]

I hope you enjoyed this little story of how the games rifle came to be. We hope to give you
more exciting stories down the line of current and upcoming features.

I’ll see you in the next devlog

- Dan Pettersson, creative director and tech artist

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1909100/Only_Lead_Can_Stop_Them/