Weekly Update: Storm Brewin’...

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Week of March 18, 2019
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Hey Everyone,

Nick again. Sorry we missed you last week, I was out of town. But I’m back! After a long week in Florida and a lovely wedding, I have returned (just in time for Jeff to be off at GDC, timed that perfectly, ha!). The week away gave me a good opportunity to reflect on some of the ideas we had going forward and breath a little, but it also set me back on how much I wanted to be in constant, direct communication with the team - so I’m jumping right back in. Justin (our gameplay programmer and technical artist) and Sarah (our concept artist and 3D modeler) did a TON of kickass work, so I’m here to show you some of what they worked on and get you hyped for more!

I wanna start this week’s post off by sharing a little something Justin worked on. Currently, the monster is a shadow of its future self, so it needs some backbone to really put the fear in ya. It’s not quite done, but check out Justin’s efforts here. We swear he tried his best…
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IF YOU CAN DREAM IT, SHE CAN DRAW IT
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Continuing on the art rampage, Sarah cranked out concept after concept and diligently adjusted things to my feedback. “A little to the left…” Sarah is a talented and fast artist, so after putting her through her paces we quickly got to designs for the Leviathan and the fishing boat that were to all of our likings. I’m too excited, I gotta stop talkin’ and start showin’… Here we go!
Let’s start with the Leviathan. I asked Sarah to pull from creatures in Godzilla and Pacific Rim, adding in aquatic elements. And she nailed it. Here’s the first Leviathan you’ll be reeling in...
If you look really hard you can see a liiiiiittle black dot between the tail and the back. Yeah, that’s you. That’s the scale of beast we’re lookin’ to set you up against. (Good luck...)

Here’s a quick storyboard tease...
“Oh… shit.” - You, probably.
And here’s what you’ll be using to wrangle in these deep sea terrors.
Everything you’ll need: Good old fashioned mechanical fishing rod, spears for spearing, and - of course - state of the art jump thrusters.

After we finalized designs, Sarah got to work on the models and sent over some assets for the vertical slice Justin made.
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GET IT TOGETHER, TEAM!
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So what else was going on at Mutant Studios? What do ya wanna know? We’ve gone to see Captain Marvel twice each (it was great!), had some burritos, did some laundry...

Ohhhh you wanted to know about the game? Well, we have our internal demo in a good spot and next week we will show off more gameplay concepts to you all. Jeff’s off at GDC learning about all the new tech and resources we can try to leverage in the coming months.

TASKS (ONGOING)
Some modeling revisions (Leviathan pieces)
Level design tools (Lightning attacks, obstacles)
Partying (because Jeff is out of town)
More documentation (Design docs, schedules, asset lists)
Gameplay scripting and implementation

MORE, MORE, MORE!
The team has accomplished a lot in the last two weeks. Hopefully you’re excited to see what comes next. Now that we’ve made our big push to get the vertical slice together, we’re gonna take some time to get feedback and organize ourselves for the rest... This will include discussions about the other Leviathans, the environment, the story, the team, the schedule, and nailing down every little detail about the experience. Maybe we’ll set up some cameras and get some sweet behind-the-scenes action of us arguing about the details.
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FROM THE SHADOWS
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I feel like I, personally, missed out on a lot by being away for a whole week. This game’s premise and scope is so massive and epic that I want to just spend all of my time on it. Not working on it for a week was honestly crushing, which I think says a lot about how excited I am to help bring this thing to life.

At the same time, I couldn’t be more proud of what this team accomplished in such a short time - Justin and Sarah both deserve all the praise in the world and more for their epic work and incredible attitudes. Justin’s design for the gameplay has the game feeling phenomenal place and Sarah’s art has set the tone perfectly. I look forward to seeing how much these two can push the limits and continue to exceed my expectations.
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STAY ONBOARD!
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That’ll do it for this week. More Shadow of the Leviathan updates will be coming steadily as we work, so follow us on Twitter to get different development updates or subscribe to the Mutant Studios newsletter to get updates there.

We’ll also be reaching out for playtesters, general feedback, and doing other fun things on Twitter so be sure to follow us for all of that!

Mutant Studios: @MutantStudios

Thanks for joining us on this adventure. We can’t wait to get it into your hands!

Nick


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