Hey everyone!
We are officially full steam ahead with production, and the studio is buzzing. Moving forward, we want to make sure you’re entirely in the loop with what’s happening behind the scenes, so expect a lot more updates dropping more regularly!
These recent months have been very busy - we have found a publisher with Silver Lining Interactive and welcomed a few new faces to the team; here is what we’ve been up to across the board!
Teaching Duke New Tricks
Duke is the heart and soul of Hounded, and making him feel like a real, living dog is our biggest priority.
Our animation team is currently deep in the weeds with Duke’s movement system. We’re using Unreal's cutting-edge Motion Matching tech. Because we are aiming for true-to-life border collie movement, it comes with a pretty steep learning curve, but the early results are already looking amazing.
Bringing the Characters to Life
While Duke is our star, the human cast is shaping up too!
Old Thomas
On the animation side, we’ve been running some early facial tests. Check out this preview - just keep in mind, he's currently bald and missing his trademark beard for testing purposes ;)
Artemys Fletcher
We finally got a good first look at the model for Duke’s master! He’s looking great, and the art team is moving on to his detailed head sculpt and hair next :)
Gameplay Design
There's two main things our Design & Programming folks focused on most recently:
The Magical Duke: The programmers have been focusing heavily on Duke's unique abilities, primarly to get Duke's Power Bark/Howl and Scent mechanics ready for the rest of the team to implement in the game!
The Hunter: Designers have been blocking out gameplay ideas and using feedback to make the Hunter encounters as tense and satisfying for the player as possible, as well as finalising all of the documentation for our gameplay systems, which the programmers will use to build them!
Crafting the Atmosphere
We have always known audio and music would be very important for Hounded. Our audio team have been busy recording real dog sounds for use in the game so we will have very accurate border collie sounds!
Not only that, but our composers are officialy working on the music! They are currently working on unique themes for Old Thomas and Fletcher, as well as the ambient music for Act 1 when Duke first wakes up in his home.
What's Next?
We're working on a little redesign of the key art, keep an eye out for it soon! As we continue through the process, we will make sure to keep y'all updated. The road ahead is looking bright, we're very excited for what's to come!
Thank you all so much for the support!
If you would like to join the Official Hounded Community Discord Server, you can do so through here!
Do you have any questions? Bark! We'd love to hear your thoughts :)