Descent of Lunaris Dev Log 01

[p]Hi all - this will be a roughly weekly blog going into detail and pulling back the curtain a bit on our process for building Descent of Lunaris (DoL). As a founder and production manager on the game I've had the opportunity to see the evolution of the team's creative process over the course of development and watch the ideas of all our talented members combine into something greater than the sum of its parts.[/p][p]An interesting part of our dev cycle is driven by our art style which combines 3D and 2D assets into a highly unique aesthetic. We're big believers in finding our favorite talent for any given area of the game, and giving them a ton of latitude to express themselves. We find this allows people to bring their best efforts and engagement, and the game is really greater for it when things click.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Francine Bridge is our artist for all the enemies in DoL - and wow are there a lot of them. She has made other video games, but is also an accomplished artist for other types of projects. What we fell in love with in her work was the extremely original scifi/fantasy/horror designs we've seen her do elsewhere and the shared influences we have across the RPG landscape.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Alex Preuss is our artist for our environments (among other things) and is an expert in building in-engine for Unreal projects. He handles everything from concept art to implementation from our level design pipeline. Alex has worked on a ton of games (and book covers and many other things) and has a wonderful sensibility and ability to execute that we leverage all through DoL.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Over the course of the project, I've seen their collaboration evolve into a level of almost intuitive connection on what an area of the game should be, and how the environments and monsters seem to converge even during the concepting stage where they are working separately. Seeing the more hard sci-fi influences of Alex's part work converge with Francine's almost punk-ish sense of unapologetic creativity has given the project a visual identity that we're all extremely proud of.[/p][p]Now that we've gotten to the point where the UI and combat effects are all working together to give the player a strong sense of feedback in both 1st person "formation" and 3rd person "tactical" combat styles, we think we're really able offer a journey into a world that feels truly alien. As we're nearly to our public playtest and have a ton of levels in the game we've had tons of opportunity to leverage these assets, along with our huge OST and sound effects to create a truly immersive experience for the player.[/p][p]We hope you look forward to solving the mystery of what lies in wait within Lunaris![/p]