Hey, Chris Rogers here, Art Director for Necropolis. We’re getting close to ship and the game is really coming together. I thought I’d give you a little peek-behind-the-curtain and share how things are going.
At this point in production, I usually start my day with an hour of playing Necropolis. It is a good way to start the day, getting a player’s eye view on the game, and it reminds me of some priorities I may have thought of on the way homethe previous night but forgotten by the next morning. Plus it’s getting more and more fun every single day.
Its also a bit strange because the game changes so much from day to day at this point as the team begins the process of balancing and tuning the various systems. One day I can purchase a critical item for a few gems and the next it suddenly costs me 500. Monster types behave differently, or disappear and are replaced with different enemies. The most exciting change last week, however, revolved around food.
Food is going to be very important in Necropolis. Your actions require stamina and the maximum amount of your stamina depletes over time (sometimes very quickly if you choose to use your power attacks). The easiest way to get some of that stamina back is to eat a little food. In fact, for most of last week it was very easy, nearly every enemy dropped food and as long as you were able to survive a combat encounter you could heal up and replenish your stamina.
Then, on Thursday, several things changed at once. First, the number of items you could carry got trimmed significantly. No more hoarding a butcher shop’s worth of meat under your hat. It hardly mattered though because the second change was to make food a much rarer drop. Not knowing about the changes I just continued on as I had before, playing a little sloppy and eating up in the quiet spots. Yet as I progressed I eventually ran out of food. Since I was hungry my stamina cap began creeping down, making combos difficult to pull off and power attacks a bad idea. I needed some stragglers I could pick off and loot, but I couldn’t find any. So then I tried to craft a potion which could restore my stamina, but I needed an ingredient (Fade Eyes) so that didn’t work either. I died, but it was a frantic and fun last few minutes.
That’s it for now, next post I am going to introduce the Character Team, the animators and the 3D Artists that have made all the monsters creatures that haunt the halls of the Necropolis.
–Rogers
