Who are we?
We don't want to use the term "small" development studio, because in fact there are only two people working on the project now. Krzysiek (level designer) and Grzesiek (that's me, and I take care of programming and technical aspects of the project). At the moment we're both working on the game only part-time because Krzysiek runs his own business (not related to game development) and I'm working as a mobile applications programmer. Thanks to that we are able to fully finance the development of the game from our own resources. In the future, we plan to switch to full-time development, but for that to happen the game must first start earning money.
Why we are creating a retro shooter?
The answer is actually simple. Because we love retro shooters. We grew up on Doom, Duke Nukem, Soldier of Fortune, FEAR, and many other shooters from that era.
Then there was a very long break and shooters inspired by the classics started appearing on the market. We played DUSK and Project Worlock and thought to ourselves "This is fu***ng awesome". That was the first time we had the idea to create a retro FPS game. For some reason discovering another gem - HROT (at that time the game wasn't yet in early access) - turned out to be a turning point for us. It was sometime in the summer of 2020. That's when we started creating the first prototype, which looked more or less like this:
Apart from the general assumptions, not much was left of this prototype. The more recent version looks like this:
Where do we get our inspiration from?
I'll give you a short list along with specific inspirations:
Doom
- focus on action and gun feel
- a large number of enemies on each level
Duke Nukem 3D
- interactivity with the environment
- numerous secrets
F.E.A.R
- heavy atmosphere
- slow motion
Soldier of Fortune
- bloody executions of your opponents
Here is an example of gory executions:
You could say that this is the core of the GAZ gameplay. There's bound to be more to the game, but we'll keep you posted on that in future posts.
What do we work on?
Currently, we are using Unity version 2020 and for code editing, we are using Rider from JetBrains. Mainly because Grzesiek has been working with Android Studio for a long time and he felt at home in Rider.
What is our initial goal?
First, we want to prepare a demo, which we will publish probably on itch.io. After gathering feedback from players and adding fixes, we will put the demo on Steam. From then on we will want to prepare one full chapter and release the game in early access. However, it's hard for us to give any specific dates right now.
What is the next step?
In the next devlog we will try to show you the technology stack we are using. If there will be enough interest, we will add more technical posts. Apart from that, of course, we want to publish standard devlogs on the progress of our work.
In the near future, we are also planning to launch a Discord so that we can consult our ideas with the players.
And here are a two more screenshots:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985520/GAZ/