Welcome back to another dev blog. This particular blog will be focused around CRYO and we want to show a little transparency with the lack of screenshots in our discord as of recent, along with some exciting updates.
WARNING: Spoilers for CRYO ahead
Everything is subject to change!
How's everything going?
CRYO has been coming along nicely. There’s a lot of new stuff we’ve added since the last update and we have the second monster working (and it’s terrifying!). Playtests have become more regular within the team and the monsters have gained new mechanics. We think players are going to love them.
We’ve also been hard at work on new animations, new sounds and of course, more art. We also had time to get our text logo updated too!
Why haven't there been more updates on CRYO recently?
You would think with the progress, we would be very close to release. In many ways we are, however, our increased playtesting highlighted a lot of issues, particularly with some of the level design. Let’s split this between bad news and good news:
Bad news
As we mentioned in the last devblog, levels in CRYO will have verticality included. For example, in the first level, there will be two parts to the base; an outdoors/above ground environment and an underground environment.
When we had initially planned the below ground environment, we had taken inspiration from various sources and settled on a high-tech modern looking environment. While the environment looked cool, we started to notice a lot of issues while playtesting:
- Large Open Spaces do not work very well in a horror aspect, unless you’re going for a liminal feel. It makes players, and more importantly the monsters, feel much smaller than they actually are, making big bulky monsters look human-size. On top of that, it becomes much more difficult to fill the space and keep it looking interesting for players.
- The Modern Theme we settled on feels very disconnected from the rest of the base. With the backstory of the game, the underground section is more recent than the above ground area. You would expect it to look more invested in and more modern, however, the style we went with feels too “sci-fi”. Once you’re in game, it feels like you’re playing two separate maps in one. One minute you’re in a carpeted room with a pool table and sofas, the next minute you’re in a marbled corridor with glass terrariums.
- Long Corridors Aren’t Fun, especially when running from the monsters. This became particularly apparent during internal tests. The current layout of the underground section has long corridors that branch off elsewhere. Being spotted in one of these corridors results in running in one direction for a good 10-20 seconds. The first few times, it’s not that bad, but after you’ve been chased down the same corridor 10 times, it becomes a tiresome ordeal.
- Modern Environments generally feel very empty and simplistic. This makes it difficult to fill the space without breaking the overall theme or having assets look out of place. This can be very restrictive for artists and makes re-using assets very difficult, leading to longer timeframes.
- High Tech Environments Just Aren’t As Scary as older ones. It can be done and there are horror games that pull it off, but as a general rule of thumb, it’s much harder to make, say a coffee shop, scarier than a rundown/abandoned cafe.
With the above points in mind, we had three options.
- Just release it anyway.
- Try rework it to reduce some of the issues.
- Completely remake the area with a new style/layout.
It’s an unfortunate side of game development, but often issues appear as something is getting close to being finalised. It can be really hard to get a complete picture until you have most of the area complete.
We sat down around a week back now and decided collectively that we weren’t happy with the underground section of the game. We discussed ways we could try rectify the issues but ultimately, it was decided that we would scrap the underground section and do a full remake of it. This was done with the player’s best interests in mind, as we really want to create something people are going to have fun with.
It’s unfortunate, but every image in this devblog up until this point is scrapped content. Of course, many of the assets will still be usable, so you will likely see some of them pop up elsewhere, but the general theme/style of the underground section will be completely revamped and won’t look like the above.
Good news
With the bad stuff out of the way, let’s talk about the good, and there’s plenty of it!
A different approach
In an attempt to streamline our workflow, we had adopted the process of having the lead artist handle the majority of the art direction and concepting, with artists creating from a list of required assets. This works, however, it produces an environment that’s based around one person’s vision (at least for the most part).
We decided we would try something different. Instead of having a lead artist that handles everything, the art team would work collectively, each having their own say. This has some really nice benefits, but one of the biggest is that each artist adds their own little spin on the environment. This helps keep things feeling different and fresh for players. So far, this has worked with incredible results!
Remaking the environment will take forever, won't it?
As we mentioned, it’s been about a week or so since the decision was made to scrap the previous iteration of the underground section. In that time, we’ve been blocking out a new version that addresses a lot of the issues and places a lot more focus on creating a scary environment.
For those who don’t know what a blockout (also known as a greybox) is, it’s a process where you create the level using primitive shapes like cubes or cylinders. This allows us to test out the AI, check scaling, check for issues with navigation and plan out the entire level before we build it.
We’re adding some quick textures to some objects, these are not going to be used in the final version, they’re just to give us more of a generalised feel for the environment.
These are just a couple of screenshots, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. With the current momentum, we’re likely to finish the level blockout by the end of the week. There’s a lot of assets we worked on for the previous iteration that can be used. Overall, progress is looking good!
A final big announcement
As of today, CRYO is live on steam. Make sure to drop it a wishlist and a follow!
