Hello Special Forces Operators!
In today’s devlog, we'd like to share some of our inspirations for the game. Everything has a story behind it, and we hope this Devlog will give you insight into our creative process. Let’s jump right in!
We loved Far Cry Blood Dragon, and we were disappointed we never got to see Ubisoft do more with the IP, so we took the premise of a throwback 80s’ shooter and thought it would make a great VR arcade game. 80s and arcade culture mixed well, and the game eventually expanded beyond the scope of an arcade game to a full-blown VR standalone game.
We take heavy inspiration for our Rogue-like mechanics, such as our Perk and Class Systems, from one of the best games in the genre, Risk of Rain.
Since we were working in VR, we couldn't have a traditional playable character roster. Like you see with all the colorful characters in Risk of Rain. So we treated each weapon as its own character, and that's how we came upon the Special Forces classes.
Our Enemies in the game started life as gameplay functions. Later on, we built out a look and backstory that matched their gameplay. The idea is that underneath each one of our enemies' armor and gear, they are all Exo-Bots. If a company were to mass-produce a series of robots, it'd use the same base and build up for each special role. This also streamlined the modeling processes since they all used the same base body mesh. Our skeletons share elements from Ultron, The T-800 from Terminator, Love, Death, Robots, among others.
We differ from other VR shooters with our rogue-like mechanics, character builds, and our arcade origins. Players will have a full, robust experience, complete with codex entries with lore and unlockable character classes. Our perk system and perk items are full of 80s pop culture references, and each perk has an accompanying attachment to your weapon or elevator.
We have mixed licensed music from the band Jeremiah Kane and their album All or Nothing, along with our own original soundtrack, which uses 80s synthwaves with a Doom-inspired lead guitar to keep players jamming. We hope the soundtrack becomes a bright spot in the player's experience and it sees success of its own outside of the game.
We wanted to be very cheeky. With plenty of references and easter eggs to other iconic 80s franchises. Our story is very Terminator meets Robocop. We play into tropes of evil mega corporations and use them as an outlet to air out our grievances with the current AAA gaming landscape and the rise of AI and its effect on artists and the workforce.
The player charger is a big mix of a few different 80s character designs and tropes. He has the body armor of Roboco’s Detroit police, the helmet and massive pistol of Judge Dredd, the T-visor of Boba Fett, and the undersuit and gloves of Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z.
For the exobots, we started with a Terminator reference for the endoskeleton and built out the look of each character based on 80s sci-fi tropes, as if we had to make the costumes out of reused props or common clothes on a low budget.
This game is a love letter to the 80s and some of our favorite games and media we experienced growing up, and we are so excited to share it with you. Thank you for following us on this journey. Until next time!
