Welcome to DevLog 2 (Art and Design Edition)

Hey, I’m Ruanew and welcome to my Notebook :)

I guess if Chazzox is the code guy that knows what he’s doing I’m the ideas guy, who doesn’t know what he’s doing (yet). I think my only qualification is out of all the people that Charlie knows I can try and draw, I read a lot of history shit and play a lot of RPG’s, which may or may not make for an interesting game (I guess we’ll see)

on this end of the blog you’re basically gonna hear my random ramblings about the gameplay of the game and a lot about the look of the game. Hopefully over the course of this blog I will learn the skills necessary to make an interesting and actually fun game. and that is gonna be a lot of learning, including drawing, character design, game design, animation and who knows what the fuck else. So we’ll see how it goes

The Look/ World

The world I want to set the game in is mainly inspired by my love of history and tabletop games. On the side of tabletop games there’s the obvious contributions from DnD and especially Warhammer 40k (and fantasy), whos grimdark (John Blanche) vibe i really want to bring to the game. Beyond that is the huge tabletop and wargaming community making amazing games and models. Just to name a few Trunip28, Gardens of Hecate, Trench Crusade (with Mike Franchina’s amazing art) , Saint Decent, Maison Trencavel, and basically 80% of the stuff in 28 Mag (links below).

In terms of history the middle ages isn’t particularly my wheel house (except for the Wars of the Roses and Tudor rebellions I studied in A-level history) but I think its unparalleled as a catch all “look” for any good fantasy. But in this situation I want to more heavily draw on realistic medieval pieces. Less massive pauldrons and armour bikinis, more pig faced bascinets and mail coifs. I find that a lot of real medieval designs are far more bizarre, fantastical and visually striking than the vast majority of.

So enough talking about other peoples stuff. What do I want to do? Well right now my elevator pitch is grimdark, medieval, demon induced post apocalypse. For the period in question (if i end up actually setting the game in a defined period or even on earth) i was thinking the “apocalypse” would occur sometime in the late 15th century (reign of Richard III or early Henry VII). This gives a pretty interesting period for arms and armour as well as allowing me to dip into early gunpowder weapons. And location wise I’m thinking the England as I want to draw on images of the (for me) iconic British countryside. So I’ve glossed over this “apocalypse” thing, which is also gonna be pretty important to the setting. Working idea right now is some portal to another dimension that for all intents and purposes for a medieval person, is hell. And by extension any of the bizarre and often malicious creatures spewing from this portal are demons. This demon plague spreads over Europe and creates a medieval post apocalypse of isolated communities, with the lands dangerous lands in between populated only by those brave or insane enough to face them.