The Mechanical World of Dr. Gearbox Release Date

25 Aug 2021Developer post

Our Demo Will Release At Steam Next Fest!

We are absolutely honored to have been selected to participate in Steam Next Fest this coming October! We will be launching our playable demo at this time which means that you can input your kids' schoolwork so that they "play their homework" during game time! Be sure to wishlist

21 May 2021Developer post

Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Global Accessibility Awareness Day focuses on digital access and inclusion for the more than one billion people with disabilities and impairments. Here are some character creation options from The Mechanical World of Dr. Gearbox that put a spotlight on inclusion! #GAAD #GAAD2021

04 Jan 2021Developer post

2020 Year End Review

Where to begin? Like most of the world, we look back at 2020 with mixed feelings. It was a huge year full of milestones for both Flamehawk Studios, and The Mechanical World of Dr. Gearbox. It was also a hard, exhausting year for the families behind the game. COVID-19 changed the

Where to begin? Like most of the world, we look back at 2020 with mixed feelings. It was a huge year full of milestones for both Flamehawk Studios, and The Mechanical World of Dr. Gearbox. It was also a hard, exhausting year for the families behind the game. COVID-19 changed the world and obviously no one was exempt. There were many times of frustration for obvious reasons, but the team was able to power through and persevere.

First and foremost, the game prototype was finally completed after 2.5 years of nonstop work. Here’s a list of features that are in the newest build:

Character Creation:
- 18 different prosthetic limbs
- wheelchair
- cochlear implants
- eyeglasses
- 13 skin colors
- freckles
- 5 vitiligo skin patterns
- 10 eye colors with the ability to choose different colors per eye (heterochromia)
- 38 facial sliders that control how the eyes, brows, nose, ears, mouth, cheeks, and jawline
- 11 customizable hair styles and the ability to not have hair (alopecia)
- body thickness slider
- starter clothing (hats, shirts, legwear, footwear)
Homebase player hub
- Squad Select workflow: 7 selectable squad members with 28 distinct combat abilities, ability to save up to 5 squads
- Level Select workflow: Select destination and battle trivia pack to use during battle
Turn Based Combat engine
- 4 Battle Trivia Types (Multiple Choice, True/false, Ordering, Picture Labeling)
Inventory system that allows the player to wear or store clothing options
Loot system including 34 loot items such as backpacks, hats, all sorts of clothing, and of course a chicken hat
Functional mini map that shows patrol locations
Tutorial
Web based application to create new Battle Trivia packs, create and edit questions, and the ability to permission them to game players in real-time while they are playing

Away from the game development itself, we successfully raised over $50,000 on Kickstarter! We have to give another massive thank you to everyone who generously pledged no matter the amount. Without your assistance the prototype would not have been completed on time! On that note, t-shirts, the soundtrack, and desktop wallpapers have all been sent to anyone who was entitled and supplied their credentials. If you are entitled to any of these things and have NOT received them, please email [email protected]... and be on the lookout for the Behind the Scenes Art & Lore Digital PDF that will be emailed out in January to anyone who is eligible to receive it!

We also made some awesome friends in 2020! From charities and non-profit organizations, to esports organizations, fundraisers, advisors, teachers, gaming industry professionals, and more, we sure were busy on the partnership side of things. We’re looking forward to making some big announcements in 2021 in connection to partnerships and other important news!

Finally, a very special thanks to our social media followers and of course the wonderful Flamehawk team itself for completing the prototype just in time for 2021!

Thanks to everyone who has joined us on this wild ride and we cant wait to take our next steps together with you!

Original post

21 Nov 2020Developer post

November 21st 2020 Update

Welcome back everybody! Today we wanted to kick off with some details around our developmental roadmap. The team is working hard to complete the prototype before 2021. That gives us about 6 weeks to get a bug free version of the core game loop together. If you’ve been tracking ou

03 Nov 2020Developer post

November 3rd 2020 Update

Welcome back everyone! To kick off this week’s update we are going to take a look at another armor set and some more loot! First up is our “Ranch Hand” set that Eric Crosby built for us. The set is coupled with 50 Battle Trivia questions that are themed around the American fronti

16 Oct 2020Developer post

October 16th 2020 Update

Hey everybody, it’s that time again! Let’s start this update by taking a look at some of the incredible work by our 3D all-stars, Eric Crosby and Caleb Embleton-Oliver. First up is the armor set that will be connected to our construction themed battle trivia pack. After some good

Hey everybody, it’s that time again!

Let’s start this update by taking a look at some of the incredible work by our 3D all-stars, Eric Crosby and Caleb Embleton-Oliver.

First up is the armor set that will be connected to our construction themed battle trivia pack. After some good old-fashioned research, we provided Crosby with some existing images of real-world experimental exoskeleton suits. Eric then came up with a design that stays true to the actual technology that is already helping vehicle assembly employees augment their lifting abilities while working at auto assembly plants. Here’s a first look at our very own exosuit:

In more behind the scenes news, here’s a sneak peak at the armor set that will ship with the sports themed battle trivia pack. Again we used some real world references and Caleb Embleton-Oliver did a fantastic job not only building the color-customizable, wearable clothing set but also the backpack that has a 3d soccer ball rolling around inside of it!

Caleb also worked on tons of individual loot items over the past couple of months. This pair of flats, along with the tutu, boxing gloves, and shield style backpack are not part of any packaged armor set, but you can expect to find them in the loot tables throughout your adventure for sure.

Here’s a look at how all of the recently worked on items look in the game engine itself:

The rest of the team have been spending a lot of time working on the core game loop. Etch has recently spent an untold number of hours tweaking character abilities and camera angles for the turn-based combat engine. Our alpha build now allows us to test all of the Gearboxian critters (Chuck, S.I.R., Sike and Botley) and the Kerhonkson critters (Mandiphyll, Rock Goblin and Nado). Speaking of Nado, you can expect to see a Friday Feature soon that finally reveals them on the critters page of our website soon (https://www.flamehawkstudios.com/critters).
The team has also been working on the finishing touches to set up our wearable armor sets, Kerhonkson level design, mob patrols, audio implementation, some much needed hair color fixes, lots of UI implementation, tons of bug fixes (thanks for tracking those Bozz!), and more.

Also, in not exactly "game" news we have been ironing some Kickstarter deliverables including the Behind the Scenes Art & Lore Digital PDF, Desktop Wallpaper Assortment, and our Soundtrack!

Okay that’s it for now, thanks for checking in and we will see you all in a couple weeks!

Original post

25 Sep 2020Developer post

September 25th 2020 Update

Time is flying and we are back with another update! Continuing our recent Kickstarter rewards theme, Eric Crosby is putting the finishing touches on the 3D version of Etch’s digital obelisk concept. The backer names are almost all finalized and the only thing missing is getting t

Time is flying and we are back with another update!

Continuing our recent Kickstarter rewards theme, Eric Crosby is putting the finishing touches on the 3D version of Etch’s digital obelisk concept. The backer names are almost all finalized and the only thing missing is getting the LED screen to cycle through the backer names. Check out this quick clip of both the digital obelisk and the Kickstarter Backer Armor that Eric recently completed as well:

Watch on YouTube

In other 3D happenings Caleb Embleton-Oliver and Eric Crosby have been working on dozens of loot items for over a month! We will be revealing all of the cool items over the coming weeks and months but here are a couple sentimental favorites to kick things off.

This is the fabled “chicken-hat!” Way back when Etch drew up the loot crate concept he included a chicken shaped hat popping out of the crate itself. Over time the chicken hat became a running joke – will we or wont we really make it!? Welp, looks like we have our answer! Check out the concept and the 3D version below. And just for good measure, also pictured is our “Marty McFly” style vest along with a pair of padded gloves and bear paw slippers.

In “even-more-loot” news, Eric Crosby was tasked with the delicate requirement of making “Greech’s Jacket.” This is a another great example of how our team takes real world items and turns them into something special in our digital world. Scroll down for an OLD picture of Greech wearing the jacket and Crosby’s 3D version of it:

Moving over to the programming effort, the refactoring process continues with major progress being made on the Battle Trivia engine itself. Up until now it could only be used during offense combat spells, but this latest update lets us apply the Battle Trivia workflow to the blocking of incoming spells as well. We’re also able to leverage this code to work Battle Trivia into other aspects of the game. Come across a loot crate? Answer the questions correctly and your chances of scoring even better loot will be increased!

We’ve also been spending a ton of time and effort getting all of the missing critter abilities into the game. Etch and the programming team have been working through all of our Gearboxian (Chuck, Botley, Sike and S.I.R.) and Kerhonkson (Mandiphyll, Rock Goblin and Nado) critters over the past two weeks. Each of them has a specific set of abilities and overall combat role - it’s going to be a lot of fun mixing and matching critters to create a party that best suits the individual user’s playstyle.

Finally, we now have a working prototype of the parent/teacher content creation tool that allows an administrator to add their own Battle Trivia questions and sets. Although the User Interface is not complete, the functionality itself is feeling awesome! The best part is that we can use this tool ourselves to input our own questions that will ship with the game. This is a huge timesaver for our team! We are testing it out with 5th Grade Science questions of the multiple choice and True/False variety but Ordering and Picture Labeling question types are up next!

That’s it for this update, see you next time!

Original post

12 Sep 2020Developer post

September 11th 2020 Update

It’s time for another update! Before we show off some new stuff, the decision has been made to refactor some core functionality of our game. This means that the date of our Early Access launch has been pushed out. We are currently analyzing the specifics so stay tuned for a revis

31 Aug 2020Developer post

WE DID IT!

WE DID IT! Our Kickstarter campaign surpassed the $50,000 goal last week! The overwhelming support from friends and family of the studio as well as from the public is honestly quite humbling for our team. Thanks to your support we can continue to build The Mechanical World of Dr.

13 Jul 2020Developer post

July 13th 2020 Update

Welcome back to another huge update! We are just 8 days away from the launch of our Kickstarter so read on to get a behind the scenes peek at some of the backer rewards concepts that we have been considering in addition to all the usual update goodness that we have coming at ya!

27 Jun 2020Developer post

June 27 2020 Update

Welcome back! The past two weeks have been a blur for the team but the good news is that we’ve got a lot to show for it! A huge focus for Etch and our programmers this week has been the implementation of our User Interface (or “UI”) across almost all of the game. Here’s an early

Welcome back! The past two weeks have been a blur for the team but the good news is that we’ve got a lot to show for it!

A huge focus for Etch and our programmers this week has been the implementation of our User Interface (or “UI”) across almost all of the game. Here’s an early look at how things are shaping up:

The Battle Trivia UI

Open World UI

Squad Select UI

We are also finishing up our player creation and customization process. Check this out!

Shifting gears, our 3D artists have been grinding away at the list of armor sets that we plan to launch Early Access with on Steam this summer. Eric Crosby completed our “First Responder set” that honors all of the front-line heroes around the world. Like all of our armor sets, the colors are completely customizable. Here are some screenshots of the final product:

Eric also managed to create the first iteration of our highly customizable “Super Hero” set. This set will feature four versions of each set piece and will also include different logos that can be placed on the chest area! Here’s a quick look at different color versions of the first Super Hero set:

In other armor set news, Caleb Embleton-Oliver finished up the “Space” set and you can see why it’s a team favorite:

Caleb also kicked off his work on our “Firefighter” set, here’s a sneak peak at some progress that was made on the helmet:

In some non-3D news, Etch spent a good portion of time perfecting the particle effects for the player’s combat abilities and he also spent many hours working on the optimization process for the environmental assets.

Elsewhere on the project we are close to completing the new flamehawkstudios.com website, started to implement the various Homebase sounds, and our writers continued to shape the backstory and lore of our world. Lastly, we started to compile all of the assets and text needed to get our Kickstarter up and running next month!

It might go without saying that we’ve been grinding so hard that most of us don’t even know what day it is – but that’s all part of the fun, right?

Thanks for checking in! See you in two weeks!

Original post

The Mechanical World of Dr. Gearbox

Updates & announcements

Our Demo is LIVE!

Patch Notes: September 19 2021

Our Demo Will Release At Steam Next Fest!

Patch Notes: June 13 2021

June 5th 2021 Update

Global Accessibility Awareness Day

May 1st 2021 update

February 6th 2021 Update

2020 Year End Review

November 21st 2020 Update

November 3rd 2020 Update

October 16th 2020 Update

September 25th 2020 Update

September 11th 2020 Update

WE DID IT!

Our Kickstarter is 93% backed with 5 Days to Go!

Our Kickstarter is 50% backed!

Our Kickstarter is Live!

July 13th 2020 Update

June 27 2020 Update