Hey everyone, welcome to our first devlog. We want to use these posts to share what is actually going on behind the scenes with our projects: what moved forward, what changed, and occasionally what went wrong.
The Capsule Art Situation and Hand Drawn Scenes
We weren't completely satisfied with our previous capsule art. It actually contains an important hint about where Way of Madness (WoM) is heading story-wise, but as a main capsule it just wasn't catching the eye enough.
People online seemed to like it, but we wanted something that reads faster on Steam while still feeling like the game. So we started working on a new version, and then revised that one again.
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Old version
New version
Revised version (currently what we use)
Meanwhile, here's Surnuken (our artist) on figuring out the art pipeline: "I've been trying to find a sustainable way to create Way of Madness scenes. We have around 300 of them, so not every scene can be a massive illustration. The goal is to find a level of detail that we can keep consistent throughout the whole game. Small object movements, weather and ambient animation should help make the natural areas feel alive. Next I'm creating a batch of scenes for a fighting sequence so we can experiment with how enemies interact with this style."
Sketch of a scene
Final version of the scene
We Completed Most of WoM's Story
If we divide WoM's story into three acts, Acts 1 and 2 are completely written and locked down. Act 3 is already in solid draft form, so the next step is polishing it and finally locking the whole script.
What the Rest of the Team is Doing
WoM is currently very art-heavy, which means there are periods where the rest of us have less useful work to do without adding unnecessary features just for the sake of staying busy.
Instead of bloating WoM, we're using some of that time to prototype two much smaller games on the side: one fast-paced FPS and one casual party game. If either survives the prototype stage, we'll show you more later.
So, What Happened With tdRua?
Our original plan before diving deeper into WoM was to finish and release tdRua and hopefully build a small financial cushion from it.
The game itself is finished, but the Steam page basically never found an audience. Wishlist interest stayed extremely low, and eventually it stopped making sense to push ahead with the launch just because the game was done.
So for now, it's sitting there.
It's a strange situation because the three of us still jump in and play it together sometimes, and we genuinely enjoy it. Maybe we'll come back to it later. That's just how indie development goes sometimes.
And that's roughly where things are right now.
We're especially curious about the capsule art: which of the three versions would actually make you stop scrolling first? (Not sure if there's a real human being who reads this and ever gonna reply but anyway here goes nothing.)
See you in the next update!
-Vesvese Studios Team