I've always been a gameplay-first guy. I've button mashed my way through many a cutscene. My development of Cleared Hot has followed the same principle: Gameplay first. Find out what's fun, fill in the blanks later.
However, I reached a point where I needed a more specific visual style. What should the enemies look like? Where are these battles taking place?
I want the game to be reminiscent and nostalgic for people like me who grew up playing the Strike series, Battlefield, etc, but offer something new. I didn't want to make another "war in the middle east" game, for so many reasons. But I didn't want to lose that nostalgia.
Then one day I was talking to a friend and we had an idea. It has been 30 years since Desert Strike came out. What would the pilot from that game look like 30 years later?
We started imagining him as a grizzled, dusty old pilot, living in West Texas. Retired, but getting pulled back in to his old life.
Suddenly we both felt inspired. This felt like the right combination of grit, dry humor, and 90s action movie tropes. The main character's situation in life could mirror some parts of ours: we're revisiting our Desert Strike memories 30 years later. A bit older, a bit grayer (in my case) but maybe we still got it...
As far as how he gets pulled back in to the action, and what the specifics are, I won't spoil that yet.
Visual Style
As part of this theme, we created a new level, basing it on rural Texas / Arizona. Thankfully this coincided with hiring a 3D artist, which was a huge milestone. I've been using pre-made 3D assets for the game up until this point, just in interest of faster development. But now I had an idea of the theme I really wanted.
Luckily, I took part in a game jam with some friends a few months back and met Eron. After the jam we talked a bit and he decided to join the team. We have very complementary skillsets and he's helping me a ton on all kinds of visual aspects of the game.
New Level - West Texas
This level is still a work in progress, but we have a functional level we are building new missions for.
We also built a new homebase, pictured earlier, which is where you'll upgrade your helicopter and choose missions. It's a safe area that will change as the game progresses.
New Vehicles
What's a new level without some new vehicles?
Unmarked Sprinter Van
This beast-of-utlity serves to drop off enemies around the map. They roll up, screech to a stop, and 5+ enemy NPCs get out.
Quad Bike / ATV
Fast and nimble, but has low health.
It comes with 2 NPCs onboard: a driver and a gunner.
This is the first vehicle to feature NPCs using their own logic + decision making while onboard. The gunner runs through their standard behavior tree and decides if and when to fire their weapon.
This is the first step to having NPCs that can decide to enter vehicles and control them on their own. Imagiine seeing a bunch of NPCs run to get into a parked tank...
You can actually shoot the NPCs off the vehicle as it's driving. You have no idea how happy I was to get this working.
Thank You!
Thanks again for all of your support! There's a lot more content coming soon. This re-theme was a ton of work and will allow us to really get the feel we're going for. I can't wait to share more about the direction of the missions and story.
Don't forget to join the email list for additional info and beta releases https://clearedhotgame.com/email-list/