Anathema News

Hello all,

A new version of the demo was pushed out today. Following is a list of changes/updates. Let us know if you run into any issues!

• Fixed bug where cutscene would not play before the final boss fight of the demo.
  
• Fixed a control bug where the player could become stuck on the ladder if they attacked while rapidly pressing left or right.
  
• Fixed an animation bug where the attack animation froze when attacking immediately as the player dismounts a ladder from the bottom.
  
• General bug fixes with the config tool.
  

Hello!

Thank you for joining us for our May 2018 update! Since we have been experiencing tropical weather causing flash flooding, I thought it would be appropriate to go with a water-based theme for this update. Following are images that tie together for one particular level in Anathema.


This is a stage that we knew early on we had to have in Anathema. If you are fearful of deep waters (and what may dwell within them) then this may be one of the creepier areas in the game. A torrential storm rages across this vast ocean, causing violent waves and disturbing its inhabitants. The player must use the floating wreckage of fleets torn apart by the tempest to attempt to make it to the nearest shore for safety. The problem is there are all kinds of monsters of all sizes in the waters waiting for you, including the behemoth Dragon Turtle.

Some of you may recognize this stage from the end credits of the demo. That is an old tech demo of the stage from about two years ago so expect to see some polish when you play the game!






It's fascinating how popular culture glorifies beautiful mermaids and tends to forget about how hideous and deadly they can be. I recently watched "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" again and knew that mermaids were just what the Shipwreck Graveyard was missing. When I first began designing this enemy, I had a debate on what approach to take with its appearance. I could have easily went with the usual monstrous visage similar to the alleged photos that surfaced years ago of a dead mermaid. On the other hand, I didn't want to make them a fully beautiful being as that just simply isn't interesting and threatening in this world. As such, I opted to take the middle path and leave room for belief that the mermaid could, at one point, have been an alluring siren that beguiled passing sailors before Azrael changed so much in this world.

These sirens will leap out of the waters at varying heights and do their best to bring you back into the water with them. They will be especially dangerous in sections where you're on small chunks of debris atop turbulent waves.






I know, not the most creative name, but that's not what's important at this stage of development. ːsteamfacepalmː

Most games opt for things like killer fish, jellyfish, sharks and things of that nature. It's not too often that you see a stingray type of enemy in a game. This simple but incredibly aggressive enemy will leap out of waters to fire a spray of spines from it's tail in varying angles that the player must either destroy or avoid - otherwise, it's into the drink you go!




We have more things to show on this level but don't want to show all our cards just yet. You'll just have to stay tuned for further footage as development progresses for a more in-depth look. ːsteamhappyː

Thank you all for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!

See you in June!

-Matt

Hello all,

We're back with another monthly update! Today I'd like to bring you some interesting new developments in the asset creation department.

As some of you know, we've used Daz Studio since the project's inception, as none of us were really artists at heart. Daz provided the best solution for graphics that weren't downright atrocious. We initially wanted to present the game with pixel art, but quality artists were well beyond the scope of our budget. Unfortunately, for the amount of animation we wanted, pixel art would be been incredibly expensive and we simply couldn't afford that out of our own wallets. As a result, the pre-rendered art style was essentially born out of necessity. In the end, we think this is a nice contrast to the current happenings in the indie market as it helps Anathema stand out visually against other titles. Some might say pre-rendered graphics should have died with the 90's, but there are others that look back fondly to games that used this type of art style.

One of the issues with this approach is it relies on a lot of readily made assets that can either be used straight-away, or further customized in various ways such as geometry morphs and new textures. Part of the reason we revamped the entire game in 2015 is because of the implementation of the NVIDIA Iray render engine in Daz that allows for physical based rendering and overall improved quality images.

I've had several ideas in mind that have not been able to be realized because some of the assets necessary simply do not exist for Daz, until now.

Throughout the course of development of Anathema, we have worked here and there with Craig Daversa of Pyroklastic Games for a couple art commissions. It wasn't that long ago that Craig showed me some of his ZBrush sculpts and I immediately had that lightbulb appear above my head. Suddenly, new doorways had been opened to finally realize some of the ideas that were previously impossible. Not only could we finally incorporate completely original assets into Anathema, but work with someone we've had a long-standing relationship with that even created a pixel art Aurora sprite when we were tinkering with that art style years ago. Coincedentally, this could not have come at a better time, as I have been working with Substance Painter to create new textures to help make some of the Daz assets at least a little more original.

What you are about to see is a work in progress as we are currently rigging and applying weight maps to the mesh, so it is in a standard t-pose and isn't exactly all decked out yet.


Those that know me personally know that I am fascinated by the wendigo creature. Originally from Algonquian folklore, the wendigo may appear as a monster with some human features and are typically associated with cannibalism. These creatures have been presented in numerous shapes throughout history, but typically have some common characteristics such as antlers and an emaciated physique.

I recently gathered some reference images and showed them to Craig and asked if he would be willing to create the mesh. The results blew me away and I'm happy to share this work in progress. Here we see the wendigo as it will be in Anathema, which has more of a deer-like head and lower body, with some gnarly extended arms and giant hands.

In Anathema, a particular level will take place in a snowy summit (first shown in the March 2018 update) and the wendigo will be found here during the boss sequence. I will say, the wendigo creature is not the boss itself, but rather, a leadup to the boss of this level. I'm excited to finally see this creature that I've had such a long-standing infatuation with come to life. I can't wait to see players react to this thing running at them.

Below are a couple of gifs inside of Daz using an HDRI map for lighting and PBR textures to showcase this work in progress.



Here are a couple stills for better quality also.



Thank you all for reading. I hope you enjoyed this look behind the scenes at a new enemy and how this will allow for a more fully realized vision of the game working with Craig. Please stop by and check out his game, Survival: The Living Dead Redux. It is quite an addictive game and helped forge our working relationship together. I even did some music for his game.

You can find it here: STLD Redux: Episode 2

See you in May!

-Matt

Hello all,

I apologize for the delayed update. I had hoped that there would be more info to share after a slight delay but unfortunately that is not the case - so I will be sharing a lot more concept art and behind the scenes images. We have a developer's meeting this weekend so there should be more juicy tidbits in the next update. In the meantime, here we go!


This level is an important moment in the story of Anathema and is a real turning point in the narrative. This is an early concept art and doesn't reflect all of the ideas we now have for this level. The plans for this level are to implement a heavily vertical element - think the Waterfalls stage in Contra, but with horizontal elements also. As you progress through the level you will encounter windmills that introduce some new elements to the platforming. The player will be faced against strong gusts of wind that shift directions, either helping the player move faster and jump farther, or slowing their speed and shortening their jumps. Elevators will also be a major player in this level. We're really excited about the climax of this level as it will tremendously shake things up and introduce a really cool mechanic to the boss fight - we hope you will think the same thing when you play it.






This enemy will be found in the earlier part of the game and is actually a concept art that I revised this week from an earlier version. The Pyromancer is planned to be an intermediate enemy that gives the player a run for their money with a variety of attacks and is just a handful of AI-IQ away from a miniboss. She may not be a miniboss, but players should still feel the burn. Heh. Bad pun? ...okay





Something that I thought some of you may find interesting is the part where a level is actually designed, or "blocked out" as we refer to it internally. Here is a preliminary sketch that "blocks out" the progression of Stage 2 - "The Forest". Since this is mostly for the people interested in the level design part, this is all made in Clip Studio Paint EX, formerly known as Manga Studio by Smith Micro Software. (I really love the workflow with my Surface Pro.)

If you've played the demo, you will see there are some slight differences between the concept and the demo version. The first noticeable difference is there are no spikes in the first couple of pits, as we decided we wanted this to be more of how the player learns the patterns of the Dryads since they can be really difficult in the treetops, and the second pit is for a hidden subweapon.

The rest is mostly the same, except there is no longer a bridge after the second elevator, which is now replaced with the ruins area that also marks the checkpoint in the demo. The bridge was just simply too flat and wasn't interesting at all. The third and fourth elevators were removed entirely and replaced with more treetop jumping. This area is a loving little nod to Eruga's Forest in the NES version of Rygar. (Amazing game btw, one of my personal favorites by Tecmo.)

Lastly, the final piece of the layout was changed a bit and it leads to the boss of this area. All in all, the blueprint was followed pretty closely, but as you actually implement the concept to gameplay, some things just feel like they need a change.





As some of you know, this project has went through a ton of changes since its original conception in October 2014. We've learned a lot of new tricks along the way and keep finding ways to improve as we go along - which is great, but unfortunately, it slows down the development process. Luckily we're not on a strict deadline so we can make this game the best we possibly can with the resources available to us.

This image is what basically started it all. We had a few character concept arts, a few ideas and a general vision for the narrative. Some of the best games out there tend to start in a Graveyard (Ghosts 'n Goblins anyone?) so that was the initial vision here. Here is the initial concept from the first version of Anathema all the way to what it is today.












As you can see, this has came a very long way over the course of development. We feel that as time goes on, we do make the most of the time we're dedicating to development and improving as much as we can along the way. Being just a three-man team (currently, hoping for more soon) it makes things challenging to achieve our exact vision so we have to find ways to get it as close as possible within our available resources.


As mentioned above we have a developer's meeting this weekend. We will be discussing much in the way of the story, cutscenes and anything else we haven't previously finalized. Concept arts are getting closer and closer to finished and the script is getting close to its finishing point also. At which point we can gather everything and put the final touches on them and have the script editing taken care of so we can get with our cast to knock that out. Having everything planned out like this is going to make the development of the rest of the game much faster. In hindsight, I really wish we had taken this time to plan at first instead of along the way but we were eager to get things going and wanted to dive right in. Lesson learned. They say the main three rules of real-estate is "location, location, location". Well, the three rules of game development are actually "plan, plan, plan".

Thank you all for reading and following. If you would like to help contribute to the project, please share with your friends and help spread the word! We really appreciate you all and hope you stick with us for the rest of the ride!

See you in April!

-Matt

Hello all,

I apologize for the delayed update. I had hoped that there would be more info to share after a slight delay but unfortunately that is not the case - so I will be sharing a lot more concept art and behind the scenes images. We have a developer's meeting this weekend so there should be more juicy tidbits in the next update. In the meantime, here we go!


This level is an important moment in the story of Anathema and is a real turning point in the narrative. This is an early concept art and doesn't reflect all of the ideas we now have for this level. The plans for this level are to implement a heavily vertical element - think the Waterfalls stage in Contra, but with horizontal elements also. As you progress through the level you will encounter windmills that introduce some new elements to the platforming. The player will be faced against strong gusts of wind that shift directions, either helping the player move faster and jump farther, or slowing their speed and shortening their jumps. Elevators will also be a major player in this level. We're really excited about the climax of this level as it will tremendously shake things up and introduce a really cool mechanic to the boss fight - we hope you will think the same thing when you play it.






This enemy will be found in the earlier part of the game and is actually a concept art that I revised this week from an earlier version. The Pyromancer is planned to be an intermediate enemy that gives the player a run for their money with a variety of attacks and is just a handful of AI-IQ away from a miniboss. She may not be a miniboss, but players should still feel the burn. Heh. Bad pun? ...okay





Something that I thought some of you may find interesting is the part where a level is actually designed, or "blocked out" as we refer to it internally. Here is a preliminary sketch that "blocks out" the progression of Stage 2 - "The Forest". Since this is mostly for the people interested in the level design part, this is all made in Clip Studio Paint EX, formerly known as Manga Studio by Smith Micro Software. (I really love the workflow with my Surface Pro.)

If you've played the demo, you will see there are some slight differences between the concept and the demo version. The first noticeable difference is there are no spikes in the first couple of pits, as we decided we wanted this to be more of how the player learns the patterns of the Dryads since they can be really difficult in the treetops, and the second pit is for a hidden subweapon.

The rest is mostly the same, except there is no longer a bridge after the second elevator, which is now replaced with the ruins area that also marks the checkpoint in the demo. The bridge was just simply too flat and wasn't interesting at all. The third and fourth elevators were removed entirely and replaced with more treetop jumping. This area is a loving little nod to Eruga's Forest in the NES version of Rygar. (Amazing game btw, one of my personal favorites by Tecmo.)

Lastly, the final piece of the layout was changed a bit and it leads to the boss of this area. All in all, the blueprint was followed pretty closely, but as you actually implement the concept to gameplay, some things just feel like they need a change.





As some of you know, this project has went through a ton of changes since its original conception in October 2014. We've learned a lot of new tricks along the way and keep finding ways to improve as we go along - which is great, but unfortunately, it slows down the development process. Luckily we're not on a strict deadline so we can make this game the best we possibly can with the resources available to us.

This image is what basically started it all. We had a few character concept arts, a few ideas and a general vision for the narrative. Some of the best games out there tend to start in a Graveyard (Ghosts 'n Goblins anyone?) so that was the initial vision here. Here is the initial concept from the first version of Anathema all the way to what it is today.












As you can see, this has came a very long way over the course of development. We feel that as time goes on, we do make the most of the time we're dedicating to development and improving as much as we can along the way. Being just a three-man team (currently, hoping for more soon) it makes things challenging to achieve our exact vision so we have to find ways to get it as close as possible within our available resources.


As mentioned above we have a developer's meeting this weekend. We will be discussing much in the way of the story, cutscenes and anything else we haven't previously finalized. Concept arts are getting closer and closer to finished and the script is getting close to its finishing point also. At which point we can gather everything and put the final touches on them and have the script editing taken care of so we can get with our cast to knock that out. Having everything planned out like this is going to make the development of the rest of the game much faster. In hindsight, I really wish we had taken this time to plan at first instead of along the way but we were eager to get things going and wanted to dive right in. Lesson learned. They say the main three rules of real-estate is "location, location, location". Well, the three rules of game development are actually "plan, plan, plan".

Thank you all for reading and following. If you would like to help contribute to the project, please share with your friends and help spread the word! We really appreciate you all and hope you stick with us for the rest of the ride!

See you in April!

-Matt