Heya there folks,
It’s getting a little cold, isn’t it? Hope you’re wearing warm clothes, or you’ll soon be rolling constitution saving throws to avoid all sorts of nasty conditions. It’s also time to start to follow the Solasta tradition again… and feature fluffy friends in the intro!
Life harsh and cold, cat bed soft and fluffy
It was summer 2021…
Solasta: Crown of the Magister just launched in 1.0 on Steam with the free Sorcerer update in tow shortly after as promised during our Kickstarter. At that time, we were hard at work implementing the Barbarian and Druid classes for the Primal Calling DLC, meanwhile our level designers were already populating the dense jungles of Lost Valley. By the way, let me tell you that Druids were a real pain in the butt to implement with their Wild Shape. QA was finding new ways to break the game every day.
While the team was busy preparing the upcoming content, our leads were already starting to look ahead - what were we going to do next? Some of you may think that it was obviously going to be Solasta II, but did you know that we had several other ideas before that?
We thought about trying out a shorter, much more narrative Solasta spin-off with a set team of heroes shortly after the Cataclysm. We explored the idea of a sci-fi roguelite tactical RPG inside an ever-shifting derelict spaceship. Such ideas were shared with the rest of the team for discussion, debate, disagreements. At its core, one burning question - do we believe in the project?
It has to be Solasta II
Working on DLCs to complete our vision of Solasta - such as aiming to release all twelve classes, developing an online co-op mode and giving the community a more complete Dungeon Maker tool - gave us time to decide on our next endeavor. And that time pretty much sealed the deal when we saw Solasta’s popularity get a massive boost with both the Lost Valley free online co-op update and its release on XBOX Series, on top of its longevity thanks to ever more quality custom campaigns created by talent and passionate community members.
We had managed to release a successful game and gather a great community, and the more we thought about it the more we agreed that we wanted to grow upon the sturdy foundation of Solasta: Crown of the Magister. Through surveys and open communication with our players, we knew that switching to a new setting or a different genre would likely make it difficult to keep everyone happy.
Furthermore… We still wanted to do better with Solasta. While we are definitely proud of what we accomplished, the craftsmen we are kept on looking back thinking “couldn’t have we done this or that better”? And honestly? We can, and we will.
Enters Project Brimstone
At that time a lot of people in the industry were thinking about branching out from Unity, and so were we. Our engineers started making experiments on Unreal Engine 5, and soon we had a solid base. It was time to start anew, to build a better structure from the start - one that would solve many of the issues we had in our first game (that was built on layers upon layers of prototypes). We knew it was going to be painful, so we named the project Brimstone - a synonym for Sulfur… Soufre, in French. A word that’s very close to Souffrir, which means to suffer. So yea some people like to name their secret project after mythological figures, we named ours after a dad joke.
Players didn’t like the character faces? Let’s work on that. The animations were stiff? Let’s try to do something there. Gamepad control didn’t feel good? Yea, we’re on it too. We were going down our long list of grievances checking off what we could and couldn’t change - because although the team had grown in the last few years, we were still no more than thirty five people. And… we like it that way. It keeps internal communication fluid and everyone feels informed and involved in the project. We just need to choose our battles!
Give me a slice of that cake
Just like on Solasta: Crown of the… You know what, let’s call it Solasta I from now on. Just like on Solasta I, our first objective was to get a working prototype ready, using temporary assets that we lifted from our previous game, bits and pieces to make some features work… We soon had something that looked quite good for internal use!
Then came the vertical slice. For those who don’t know what that is, let’s oversimplify things a little for a moment and think of making a game as baking a layered cake. Normally, you’d prepare each layer separately and assemble everything at the end - but what if someone wanted to try it before it’s complete? If they only try the 1st layer, can they really imagine how the entire cake would taste?
That’s why we want to create a vertical slice of that cake. A much smaller piece requiring less ingredients - and in the case of a game, less time - to give people a taste of what the complete cake would be like. It also helps us find out if we have the ingredients in the right proportions. If the vertical slice tastes good, we can feel pretty confident about that cake! If it doesn’t, well it’s easier to rework it now than once we start baking the complete cake.
Time for the grand reveal!
Combat, exploration, dialogs, quests, inventory, items, loot… Now that our vertical slice was starting to look good and we were feeling confident about it, it was time to prepare the reveal. Because yes, creating that slice isn’t all we were up to - at the same time, we were writing the story and building the world on paper, which in turn became a trailer thanks to the work of our talented partners UNIT Image, Fire Without Smoke and Maxime Herve (not to mention a wild Amelia Tyler dropping by to voice our grand villain!).
It was time. Time to show the world a glimpse of what we’ve been up to!
And now that you’re here, are you up to stay with us some more to see where we’re heading next?
Article by Tactical Myzzrym
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