Hey Cultists,
This month’s been a busy one! First, we’ve officially moved into an office space at ACOLAB, which has been a blessing for our productivity. Second, we have exciting news regarding our new enemy type, which we are enthusiastic to see player’s reactions to. Last but not least, some announcements regarding the music we promised would be releasing for free and a mention of how our director got featured on the Tech Over Tea podcast!
Meet the Hell Byte Studios Team
Since early this year, we as a team have been working from home - which, we thought would be enough to keep up steady progress on development. However, there were complications with how we approached that and have been able to secure the opportunity to use an office space with ACOLAB! It’s still early days, but we’re coming up on our 1st full month since acquiring the space and already, by next monthly update we’ll have something to show you all from what we’ve been cooking for the last few months.
Our team from Left-to-Right:
Matthew, Flynn, Scott, Ben, Jackson H, Euan, Millie, Alf
Those not in office today:
Jackson S, Jake, Jason, Aiden
Mini-boss Concept Art: Name 'Chaos Demon'
For those who have played the pre-alpha demo available on our discord (go join if you haven’t already!) - you may remember the ‘wendigo’ enemy that would either end your run early or become a bullet sponge as the rounds progressed. This isn’t what we envisioned for what it could be.
With that said, we are beginning development of our first boss style enemy that will function as a skill-check as opposed to the other being a straight damage-check. The image below shows some possible designs we're considering for this new demon. However, one of the big things we want to fix with it was it's silhouette (if you want to learn how we managed that, check out the Tech Over Tea podcast mentioned later in this post). Previously, the wendigo-type enemy often got hard to pick out at a glance, especially in the more frantic moments of combat.
In terms of gameplay, we want these enemies to provide a challenge that the horde can't. One way of achieving this is by giving the chaos demon more ways of attacking the player, a ranged attack that punishes player who play too far from the horde and a close range slam that deals high damage to players who get too reckless.
While it says chaos demon in the heading, we’re still settling on what to officially call it - so if you have an idea of what might fit a creature like this, leave your suggestions in the comments below and who knows… we may use it (with credit) 👀
"Rivers of Blood" - Blood Reaver OST
For the last few weeks now Eyes & Arrows have been remastering the soundtracks featured in the demo so that everyone who asked for it to be available since AVCon. If you find it’s too your taste then we’re also pleased to announce we’re looking at getting ‘Gnawing Hunger’, ‘Decarnation’, and ‘Forsaken’ on Spotify by the end of the month!
Once more, big thanks to Aden Richards and Eyes & Arrows. If you like their work, go find them at the relevant socials!
Full Playlist
#232 A Faster Take On An Old Classic | Tech Over Tea
Hell Byte’s very own director; Euan got the opportunity to speak with Tech Over Tea’s host and producer Brodie Robertson and they spoke in depth about:
- Building a unique hoard enemy
- How to decipher feedback
- How to end an endless game mode
- The never-ending goal of perfect game balance
- How merging genres leads to a refreshing take on an classic Experience
If that interests you, Go listen for yourselves here! Go show Brodie some love and leave a comment saying where you came from👍. We’d love to feature on the show again!
Podcast Link:
On the Horizon
With event season coming up we want to make something clear now. Even with the stellar progress we've seen in the last month - we're don't currently think the new build will be presentable by PAX or SXSW. Therefore, we've made the decision to bring the pre-alpha demo for the events for the time being. If this changes, stay tuned to the relevant channels for updates.
See you all next month where we'll be revisiting the lesser demons... and how they might look in-game!