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[ionside]

I know it's not worthy unless there's a screenshot to show. But I think starting the Devlog now will help with driving me onwards. And only I could make sense of the current placeholder art.

Imagine Shadow of the Colossus meets a Tower defence game. Your goal is to defend the giant from the waves of enemies in a land called Burden.

A war has broken out in this land named Burden. Men are standing up against the
gods they believe use them as pawns for their own amusement. The oceans
around Burden steadily rise, leaving many cities drowning. A volcano swells and
causes devastation in the western corner, creating more chaos cracking the earth
up into the north.
Man is right to be angry with the gods, it would seem.

A design doc and concept art are in the works. Including these few pics:



The game involves a lot of elemental effects and the protagonist uses these elemental powers to great effect. But they are only an addition to what is the main goal here. Escorting Giants.



Your burden in Burden is to do as the gods bid - Escort their mules to and from various locations. Protect them from armies and villagers that believe these large monstrosities are only adding to the destruction of their land.

Greg Taylor is a great concept artist, and he's helping me lock in ideas and spawn new ones with his illustrations.

[ionside]

Another concept illustration.



In Burden, you protect your moving giant with contraptions fixed to its body. But sometimes you just want to take the enemy head on.

[seancruz]

really enjoying the concept work man! Keep it going. Can't wait to see how the gameplay looks.

[ionside]

Thanks! @seancruz

Here's a few more concepts, to fill the gap a little more before the placeholder screenshots come through.

With these we can start loosely building the 3d models, gives us a feel for the various giant masses.

[jb]

Looks amazing! I'd love to see a 2d game with this kind of art!

[mauz]

I usually don't like Tower defences, but these concepts are great! 

[Littlenorwegians]

Oh wow, my left arm to draw 1/4ths as good!

And it does sound interesting, to be honest. I'll really try to follow this one. It sounds right up my alley. Heck, it's worth it just for the art, apparently.

[ionside]

Thanks for the kind comments

I had a little fun speed concepting in ZBrush this evening, for one of the giants. I recorded a time-laps of it because... I always thought it's fun to watch these things!

Click the image to view the time-laps video:

[ionside]

Continuing on, rebuilding the mesh of the giant so it can be brought into a 3d app and polished some more. Preparing for textures, rigging and eventually bringing into the game.

A video of me retopologising, here:
http://youtu.be/omk8UvRsAWM

[Paul Jeffries]

That concept art is great, and the game idea itself sounds interesting - kind of like a fantasy version of Blast Corps.

[CorazonAzul]

Always been a fan of stocky looking giants and titans. Fantastic illustrations that anyone would hope becomes a fun game. Good luck!

[ionside]

A few mockups have been created for the main game screen to test screen real-estate, enemy scale, HUD position and so on. Just a mix of in game assets and some scribbling in Photoshop really.


This one is an early and quite bare version and is specific to the iPad. PC/Mac are a little different.
This would be the default view, the player can pan the camera around to view all angles of the giant.

[Peregrinus]

I'm clearly following this, great job! I love the art and the concept! :D

[ionside]

The level editor for burden is coming together. Here's a little info...

BEDIT (the Burden Editor) currently allows the Level Designer to...
- create a "strip" of terrain that a Colossus will walk over from a list of prefabs (pre-made terrain blocks)
- place Carriers (such as airships, wagons, etc) which will spawn when the Colossus gets near and ferry Creeps to different boarding points on the Colossus (ankles, arms, back, etc).
- design Creep Waves, that allow for different patterns of enemies to be released from Carriers. Creep Waves can also override the "level" or toughness of an enemy in order to scale its difficulty up or down.
- save all the above data to a JSON file from within the Unity3D Editor, no need to build or manage a separate tool or application.

Still very early days, and I expect we'll continue to improve and develop it as the project progresses. Maybe even build a version for players to use if we can make it simpler and more user friendly.

[ionside]

Dev Piccy...