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From Hell's Heart is a first-person, steampunk, sea hunting game. A great sea beast is roaming the ocean and you must use your tools to hunt it down and end your blood sport against the devil! Using your tools, you'll track and slay whales to collect oil to fund your ship's endeavor, collect lost journal pages of your past, and clash against the sea monster!


(http://i.imgur.com/oOLzacd.png) (http://i.imgur.com/IvsQhqj.png)


(http://i.imgur.com/nRpflM4.png) (http://i.imgur.com/Z2St255.png)


(http://i.imgur.com/cTdWBzb.png) (http://i.imgur.com/nLED7hp.png)


(http://i.imgur.com/vI8bWBw.png) (http://i.imgur.com/6DCgC27.png)

PC and Mac builds of the latest can be found here (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6d9a0l3rogc3prb/WiaWAVyM5M/Ahab)



Controls

W - Increase Speed
A - Rudder Left
S - Decrease Speed
D - Rudder Right

1 - Equip Journal
2 - Equip Harpoon
3 - Equip Sea Mine
4 - Equip Cannon

Left Mouse Button (Hold) - Charge Weapon
Left Mouse Button (Release) - Weapon Launch
Right Mouse - Open / Close Map

When Journal Is Equipped
Scroll Wheel - Highlight Journal Page
Left Mouse Button - Select / Close Journal Page Text

Esc - Application Suicide


The Team

---

John Park - 3D Modeling & Animation - http://robotriot.net/ (http://robotriot.net/)
Arif Qazi - Concept Artist - twitter.com/arfqaz (http://twitter.com/arfqaz)
Myself - Design and Eng - twitter.com/kingslizzard (http://twitter.com/kingslizzard)

Wow, this looks pretty interesting. I'll be watching it. Hoping it has high replay value. :)

wow, hunting game. But how the monster swim if it has claw for his fin?

It looks really nice, and I love the idea!

The beast is supposed to be in an evolution stage of a Water based species to a Land based. So the front would be the first to change since the front would be puling itself to land.

Thank for answering. Just got curious on your design choice.

So will it feature any big monster like in the actual whale hunting? It would be interesting though.

Looking great!
Would be fun to see some kind of video with the splashes, monster swimming and so on.

Yes. You'll be equipped with a Whaling Harpoon. This does little damage, but it has a rope attacked to it, use to latch on to the Sea Monster and pull you in the case that it's retreating. Kind of like a water skiing mini game tbh.

I'm hoping (if Murphy's law doesn't ruin me) to get a small play test before the holidays. Stay tuned, you'll be able to experience the first iteration soon.

Looking so sick, love the concept. Nice work on the water. Not super keen on the cartoony monster, also he looks sorta dinky? I don't mean to pile up more work on an early build, I look forward to whatever comes of this for sure.   :handmoneyR:

I am very curious now.  I hope this game's setting goes into a bit more than water.  Not full on wind waker persay, but some rocks or a ship crashed into those rocks would add alot of character.  It's an awesome concept nevertheless.

Absolutely, it's not on the list but I have like icebergs and sheet ice. Both destructible. I have to make them look right though in a non-expensive fashion.

When I saw the title I hoped it would be something like this. Really nice concept. Are you planning on having upgradeable ships/weapons?

Probably not.  Didn't really feel like those mechanics fit with what we wanted the game experience to be like.

Greetings fellow TIG citizens! :gentleman: Thank you for your interest in our game! My name is John Park and I am the 3D Artist working on the game project. Since some of you guys wanted to see more imagery of the game, I thought I would share some images. Hope you like!

(http://robotriot.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ShipFinalTIG.jpg)

(http://robotriot.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ShipPreviewTIG.jpg)

(http://robotriot.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/SeaMonsterPreviewTIG.jpg)

I like the concept !

How about a multiplayer mode, where players can choose to be in the hunters team or in the monsters team ? :)
Erm, might require too much work, keep up the great job !

This is awesome.  I was thinking the other day that sea-monsters were a pretty underutilized aspect of mythology in games and that a game about hunting them would be pretty cool - from the looks of it I was right!

The monster itself looks a teensy bit goofy to me though.

Thanks for taking the time to check out what we're working on guys!  :panda: :handmetalR: As for the sea monster, what you saw in the earlier pictures was the monster set in default T-Pose before it got rigged and animated. Check out the new posts. The color may change, we might also take out the hands, depending on our time constraints.

This is looking impressive, I will be watching :blink: :blink:

Alright, man I've been busy. But I added a buunch of stuff.

Windows and Mac builds can be found here.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6d9a0l3rogc3prb/WiaWAVyM5M/Ahab

New stuff:
Text Triggers
not all text is in, but some
Mouse Sensitivity
to make our writer, Ray, stop complaining
Splashes
under the boat (I think that's new)
when Moby is above Sea Level
Audio!
Seagulls
Moby groans
Ocean
Music - placeholder
The DJ Script, for out music looping
Weapon bug fixes
Barrels
Other stuff that I'm too tired to remember

Moby right now has 3 attacks
Attack from below
Circle and Close
Straight Away

Anyhoo, still lots of work to do but it's getting there.
Moby's attacks need a lot of tuning I feel and I also want to add whales to hunt during quite moments.

Alright dudes, I'm at TIG Jam right now and this past month or week (time is a blur) I've added some things.

We now have...

Oil Resource Management!
Your ship will consume oil based on how fast it's moving.

Whales!
Slaying whales produces oil barrels! These give you more oil for your ship.

Harpoon Barrels!
Throwing a harpoon has barrels attached. These will restrict beasts from moving too low below sea level. More barrels attached means more restrictions.

The Map!
With a right click, you can bring up the map! The map gives hints on where whales may be. Also, when the beast or whales are seen, they appear on it making it easier to track and hunt.

Bugs!
ya there's a few.

Anyhoo, I'll be working on this a lot right now. There's a lot of art and audio that needs to be replaced fyi.

Sooo I tried some artz.. what do you guys think? lol

(http://i.imgur.com/87joCE5.png)

(http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/121130013052-sigmund-freud-story-top.jpg)

Sigmund Freud! HAaaaa!!  :gentleman:

sigmund freud is dissapoint

*throws away everything*

Ya I know it looks like poop. Literally lol

I'll leave the art to the artists  :durr:

Looks cool! Might give environmentalists a heart attack, though....

Haha, ya they're not gonna like this at all.

Hey you guys, we have a ton of updates, we even picked a title!

Does anyone know if you post a game with a working title first, is it ok to start a new thread or can I contact a Mod and get the thread name changed?

New Stuff:

Nuisance Enemies
Basic Tutorial
360 Controller Support
Field Of View changes
Map Polish
Weather Changes
Day Counter
Wave Spawning

I think you can change the name of the thread yourself by editing your first post.

Can't wait to see how this is shaping up. I've only just noticed there is already a PC build available so I'll check that out ASAP.

Awesome! That worked great. Thank you!

Aw crap. Tutorial is broken, I had to remove it. I changed the way the map functions and it caused a blocker. Sorry if you got caught in that!

Interesting project! I've always been terrified of giant sea monsters...

This reminded me of the Dagon fight in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of Earth, it was a very atmospheric sea monster battle as well. Here is a video in case you are unfamiliar with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEL_00miBLg&feature=player_detailpage#t=463 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEL_00miBLg&feature=player_detailpage#t=463)

Alright so I made a ton of changes. Latest build can be found here (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6d9a0l3rogc3prb/WiaWAVyM5M/Ahab) as always.

New Additions

• I had trouble finding UI artists so I ended up making all the UI assets myself. We now also atlas them so the game runs much faster.
• I took out the placeholder whale and nuisance enemy models. They're just cylinders for now.
• Harpoons now tether to whales and the sea beast, allowing you to better keep up with them.
• Icebergs kill you now so be carful when you attach to whales and beasts!
• Icebergs kill you now so be carful when you attach to whales and beasts!
• Icebergs kill you now so be carful when you attach to whales and beasts!
• Cannons are now responsible for launching barrels. There are some visual bugs with this.
• Leaving the bounds of the sea causes damage to your health. I need to better convey this however.
• The circle guidance system wasn't working out. I replaced it with having the crosshair scaling when it's over a valid target.
• In the map, you can set target positions that will appear in the game world. You can even attach them to whales and the sea beast.

In The Works

• If you know any 3D Modelers that'd like to help out that'd be fantastic! Otherwise, I may need to model the whales and nuisance enemies myself as well :o.
• The music systems needs to be entirely refactored. I met a really cool musician on Reddit from #ScreenshotSaturday. Mike (https://soundcloud.com/teslightreturn) is going to be doing the music for our game and I'm SO EXCITED
• I still need to finish my writing for the journals. Getting them to the quality I need is really tough. Been writing, re-writing, and re-re-writing constantly.
• There is an end to the game, but the text content needs to be finalized. There's probably some bugs with it.
• Ocean Wakes. This is going to be the last thing I do since it's probably going to take me a long time.
• I need to re-do the Nuisance enemies. I'm not happy with them.
• I may add one more nuisance enemy that specializes in projectile attacks to give an alternative to all the close quarters combat.

I was a bit discouraged when I saw the sea hunting system of Assassins Creed Black Flag. It's very similar to the core systems in this game so seeing such a similar idea executed so beautifully was really disheartening and I ended up taking a bit of a break. However, I really want to finish this game. I'm shooting to finish it before the end of December. I'm tired of not finishing projects so I'm putting in a ton of effort to get this done at a quality I'm happy with. People joke with me that this is my white whale. But really, every game I work on becomes a white whale for me haha.

Oh ya! We also have a new super secret website!

http://onemoreturn.biz/ (http://onemoreturn.biz/)

Don't tell anyone though. It's super secret.

Hey, I just tried out the game (windows version). It's pretty neat. The water looks very nice, and the feeling of moving on water is definitely there.

I think you're missing the info in the "Controls" section. I tried to bring that up to look at what the controls are, and it was just a blank grey box. I eventually did (sort of) figure out what to do by just hitting random buttons. Perhaps even just throwing up a simple image showing what key does what would be helpful.

Also, now I really want to go back and finish reading "Moby Dick". I started it a year ago, but just couldn't get past the chapter with the descriptions of all the different kinds of whales.

Aw crap! I'll fix that tonight when I get home tonight. I knew I forgot to fix something haha!


It can definitely be a bit dry, but with some great music in the background and the right state of mind, the pages turn themselves. It deals with themes we've all experienced in our lives and is such a great metaphor for so many walks of life.

Hey guys,

I worked a bunch over winter break and managed to get a cool build out!

New addition include: Foam Trails, new Whale Mesh (still in progress), re-factored Sea Beast code, misc optimizations, teaks, and bug fixes. The sea beast should be more confrontational now. Hope you like it!

PC and Mac builds of the latest can be found here (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6d9a0l3rogc3prb/WiaWAVyM5M/Ahab)

Oh snizaaap!

Indiestatik wrote an article (http://indiestatik.com/2014/01/03/from-hells-heart/) on us!

Alphabetagamer did  as well! (http://http:http://www.alphabetagamer.com/from-hells-heart-beta-download/)

This has never happened to us yet! I should really polish this game up....

Hey ya'll

After a full day of being pumped full of caffeine and afraid of more downloads, I added few substantial improvements!

Improvements
-Replaced menu music
-Added more Death text feedback
-Finished Journal text (big component)
-Altered how Journals are acquired
-Gave more audio feedback to the sea beast
-Gave icebergs more feedback when destroyed
-Made the Journal and Map icon pulse scale when new info is available

Bug Fixes
-Text displaying bug
-Boat no longer capsizes
-Tutorial bug
-Map crashing bug after iceberg was destroyed
-When player was hurt, audio now plays
-Sea Beast's attack bug, it can hurt you again lol
-ocean refraction rendering bug fix
and some misc clean up


Tomorrow
There's a bug with the Oil meter I need to fix
I'm pretty sure there's an end game edge case I need to fix. I'll investigate that.
I'll add a How To Play section to the pause menu
I saw in a play through on YouTube, the sea beast launched like a million miles in the sky again... I really need to squash that one lol
We have a bunch of audio we can implement and replace

Thanks for the read and hope you're having a good weekend!
PC and Mac builds of the latest can be found here (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6d9a0l3rogc3prb/WiaWAVyM5M/Ahab)

Looks amazing, can't wait to try it (tomorrow, sleep first)

Sleep is good. In fact, people who sleep are in our target demographic!

Congrats on the articles! That's how I found out about your game. Very atmospheric and immersive, but I did find it's tough to figure out what exactly you need to do and how to do it. Which is probably by design

Thank you so much!

Ya, the lack of explanation for controls is a bad on my part; I'm working on it today. The lack of an explicit goal is by design. We knew a lot of people wouldn't get it quick and we're working on ways to keep the interest levels long enough for them to figure it out (the game is really only supposed to last ~20 min). But for those who do find it we hope they find it worth the time and effort. Who knows, we're not opposed to doing big design changes anyways. It could still change.

Fixed some bugs!

-The Sea Beast and you now collide
-You should capsize less now, hopefully never
-Journal bug fixed
-Journal font changed (by request)
-End game fixed
-misc bug fixes and optimizations.

(http://i.imgur.com/5BZ9JsK.png) (http://http://i.imgur.com/WqGVFQR.png)
rawr!

Goodnight...  :tired:

Latest bug fix update to reduce your glitchiness. Capsizing has a temp fix for now.

We added a Charging Radial Meter to better display that holding down the mouse button increases distance.
Fixed misc UI bugs such as fade in / fade out conflicts
More specific text when died.
Fixed bug where user cold not chain to Sea Beast.
Ship Reset after being attack or colliding
Other misc bugs and optimizations.


I'm still working on the How To Play section to the pause menu and some art for polish and symbology. Anyhoo, gooday to you all!  :gentleman:

Wow, my friend showed me, a while ago, a picture of someone requesting a game similar to this. This looks amazing. Downloading it right now. I don't have time to play until some time this evening, though. I'll let you hear back from me after that!

EDIT:
Meh, I couldn't resist. I tried it.

I'm sorry to say, however, that I'm a bit disappointed. :/

The initial premise was great. A clear view and a pretty ocean. A fearsome beast appeared and I fired my cannon (which I felt very bad about doing, though; you need to give me some storywise motivation to attack this poor beauty! :().

However, the screen was soon covered in this constant vignette of obscured edges (http://i.imgur.com/0R8oBpS.png), which really made no sense as the rest of the sky was as bright as before, and I felt like I was wearing some sort of goggles with my side vision covered. Even worse, though, I kept getting eaten by this creature that was nowhere to be seen, no matter how much I turned the boat and my head. Again and again. I finally got one more glimpse, but then that was it.

As for technical problems, the control scheme screen had parts missing (http://i.imgur.com/uyGTwiW.png) (also, how come the mouse was shown [also partially obscured] when I accessed the controls from within the game, but not on the loading screen?), and when I had lost, the button to go back to the menu didn't work, and eventually it faded to take me to a new screen, so why were the buttons there at all? :-\

Nonetheless, I love the premise and I love the visuals (when I'm not forced to wear goggles). The steering was a bit weird. I felt like the character was almost lying on his stomach on the deck rather than standing up, the way the camera was placed. As for aiming, you might want to get some inspiration from Wind Waker, though it seemed you might actually have done so. Study it some more!

I love the icon. Fantastic. Very, very pretty, with the whale and all.
I'm not sure, because I forgot to read it properly, but I believe the monologues had some spelling errors.
What's that code-lock looking counter thing in the top for? What's the day counting system for?
Pressing 1 for the journal doesn't work, but I guess you haven't added that yet.

To summarise, great idea, great visuals, great audio. Controllers not so great, visuals not so great in different aspects from those in which they are great; namely, the graphics are pretty, but confusing and not so helpful.

Keep working! I'm sure this can turn into something great.

Give me a proper incentive to kill off those poor animals, though! Playing Shadow of the Colossus, I only killed the creatures because the mechanics were fun, but there was no mental motivation to do so. To save his girlfriend? Who is he? Who is his girlfriend? Why should I care? Why should I put a girlfriend I don't know above these magnificent beings and kill them for her sake? I don't want to do that! :biglaff:

See what I mean? ;D

Keep going!

Oh, and one really nice thing is that despite the game being made in Unity (misextracted the .rar at first and found a lot of Unity files), it doesn't look like it was, which a lot of less polished games in Unity do. That's very good. You might want to figure out how you can make the menus a little less blurry, because you don't want to scare people off from your pretty game by having menus that are not on par!

Wow Skomakar'n, this is fantastic feedback! Thank you so much for putting in the time and effort to writing this. Ok, so I have a lot to work on and improve from this. So, things I will work on:

-Tune the vignette and have it better communicate it represents your health.
--I have to admit, I've done a really poor job on communicating the rules and state of the game and it's something I'm trying to improve. 
-I need to better warn the player of incoming attacks to give them a chance of proving their skills
--This is. Probably due to just me knowing everything about the game and understanding even the smallest queue. I'll have to better communicate these foreshadowing attacks better.
-Seems like we're having some UI scaling issues with different resolutions and / or aspect ratios. I'll implement some fixes for that this week.
-I'll fix that Button issue that doesn't sound right
-They camera position should be an easy fix and I can get that in tonight I bet
-My roommate actually just got wind waker for Wii U so I'll give that some time for research! (And fun of course!)
-The icon is actually placeholder :,(
--I'm very inexperienced with art so it takes me longer to do that stuff. It's the last art asset I have to work on. 
-Polish up the menus. 
-Check journal button works on all computers
-Spell and grammar check journal pages

This is fucking fantastic! I really can't express how great this is. This feedback is quality!

Thank you again so much Skomakar'n! I won't let you down!

Aw! Thanks for taking my perhaps a bit harsh words so professionally. I only wish to tell you what I think could be enhanced in order to perfect such a lovely base. :coffee:

I'll peek in again in some time, to see what has happened! :handthumbsupR:

So we've been working on this for a while and have a huge update coming next. However, unfortunately we're a little burnt out so we're taking a small break for a month to work on a game with a smaller scope.

Just letting ya'lls know when you see the post coming soon.

Really like the look of this game.  The idea of it.  Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

I guess this is related to From Hell's Heart, but I sorta quit my job to go full time indie.   :screamy:

I posted a weee little blog (http://onemoreturngames.tumblr.com/post/90580030339/drive) explaining a fraction on why I quit my job to go independent
I sincerely hope no one experiences some of the shit I had to. But if you do, make the right choice for yourself and don't settle for less than you're worth (which is a lot)