Halls of Torment - Dev Journal #1
Welcome to the Halls of Torment!
What’s this, a new game? Indeed it is! And before I get into any details of what it exactly is and how it’s made, I think it’s important to explain how we got here in the first place. During the past five years we’ve made our previous game Good Company. Although it did find its wonderful audience and is still maintained, we felt a certain fatigue setting in. This journey towards the first 1.0 release was a taxing one and it had an immediate impact on how we thought about future projects. We want to learn from our past mistakes and achievements and so, long story short, we decided to do the following three things with our next game:
We’ve made many rounds of internal game concept pitching and prototyping. Many of our ideas could not satisfy the constraints outlined above.
And then Vampire Survivors came along and demonstrated how it’s done. Naturally, such a successful game would give rise to plenty of imitators. At first we hesitated. We didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon. But the more time we spent with this newly hatched genre, the more it seemed like a very good fit for us. And so, we sat down, we made a plan, and we made sure it’s in line with our three goals mentioned above.
So … *clears throat*
As you might’ve guessed already, Halls of Torment is a reverse bullet hell roguelite in the vein of Vampire Survivors and similar games with light RPG elements. However, we wanted to put our own spin on the genre. We are big fans of old school action RPGs and CRPGs. Those games from the late 90s with their specific pre rendered aesthetic evoke warm feelings of nostalgia in us, and we’re sure that many players feel similarly. We wanted to capture those vibes and include them in Halls of Torment. Our goal is to make a game you can play casually while still enjoying the rich atmosphere of these grandiose role playing games that used to consume a large chunk of our free time during our youths.
I hope that we succeed, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.
All the best!
Paul
What’s this, a new game? Indeed it is! And before I get into any details of what it exactly is and how it’s made, I think it’s important to explain how we got here in the first place. During the past five years we’ve made our previous game Good Company. Although it did find its wonderful audience and is still maintained, we felt a certain fatigue setting in. This journey towards the first 1.0 release was a taxing one and it had an immediate impact on how we thought about future projects. We want to learn from our past mistakes and achievements and so, long story short, we decided to do the following three things with our next game:
- Don’t commit to a project until we have the core mechanics running AND said mechanics are fun on their own.
- Know exactly where the game design is going as early as possible. We want to be able to describe a play session from start to finish in our own words as concretely as possible.
- Limit the projected development time to a minimum and adjust the scope appropriately. “In the ballpark of six months” became our rule of thumb for a manageable project length.
We’ve made many rounds of internal game concept pitching and prototyping. Many of our ideas could not satisfy the constraints outlined above.
And then Vampire Survivors came along and demonstrated how it’s done. Naturally, such a successful game would give rise to plenty of imitators. At first we hesitated. We didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon. But the more time we spent with this newly hatched genre, the more it seemed like a very good fit for us. And so, we sat down, we made a plan, and we made sure it’s in line with our three goals mentioned above.
So … *clears throat*
As you might’ve guessed already, Halls of Torment is a reverse bullet hell roguelite in the vein of Vampire Survivors and similar games with light RPG elements. However, we wanted to put our own spin on the genre. We are big fans of old school action RPGs and CRPGs. Those games from the late 90s with their specific pre rendered aesthetic evoke warm feelings of nostalgia in us, and we’re sure that many players feel similarly. We wanted to capture those vibes and include them in Halls of Torment. Our goal is to make a game you can play casually while still enjoying the rich atmosphere of these grandiose role playing games that used to consume a large chunk of our free time during our youths.
I hope that we succeed, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.
All the best!
Paul