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[LadyAbadeer]

Hi everybody! I'm Rossana, community manager at Rimlight Studios, and we want to show you something from our videogame in development, ZHEROS.


ZHEROS is a 3D action-brawler set in a sci-fi world threatened by Doctor Vendetta and his minions: biomechanical creatures and droids that he created in his laboratory. The main characters are Mike and Captain Dorian, agents of an intergalactical defence squad.



To destroy the enemies on your path you will use lots of combos, some badass weapons and mechanical armour.





ZHEROS is designed for next gen platforms and we are going to release a gameplay trailer in the next days. In the meantime, we want to introduce to you our hero, Mike:




For more infos, you can follow our Dev Diary: http://www.zherosgame.com/
Our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/zherosgame?ref=hl
Our Twitter account: https://twitter.com/RimlightGames

Cheers!

[LadyAbadeer]

Hi everyone! We are proud to announce our first Gameplay Trailer!




Enjoy it!

We'd like to read your feedback

Cheers!

[baconman]

Looks rather pretty, but it also gives the impression that controls have a bit of windup/anticipation behind everything, and that animations are committed - once you're winding up a punch, you're left wide open*. Solid character/setting design, if a bit reminiscent of Ratchet and Clank... which isn't inherently a BAD thing; but if you're going to distinctify your game from it, you'll need more than a big robot to do so - or you'll have to make those big robots interesting mechanically, and tie that into creative utility/level design.

That said, it's okay to have some windup/anticipation to the animations - it gives a sense of weight to the attacks and physics, which is nice. But players should always have more time to react to enemies than the enemies have to react to the players - so make sure your enemies don't have quicker jabs than the players, they should have at least equal windup, possibly + 3-5 frames (so the player can get a moment of uncertainty from tied attacks, and then "feel victorious" when they narrowly beat it out), save for That One Big Bad; and there should be SOME defensive manuever that they can cancel into from it - like dash-cancelling, or a block/parry button.

Maybe focus a *little* less on making the player characters so polarizing in their animations, and make the enemies a bit MORE interesting in theirs, since THAT is where their attention should be focused, save for dialogues/cutscenes:





Finally, include some kind of Arcade/Story mode switch that enables/disables the dialogue/cutscenes - because some people play for the story, and some endure the story so that they can play. This does both of them the favor of maximizing their enjoyment of your game.


* That said, I'm watching a trailer, not actually hands-on playing the game; so do take with that grain of salt.

GO GET 'EM, CAPTAIN!

[LadyAbadeer]

I'm sorry for the delay in getting back to you. First of all, thank you for your feedback, we appreciate it After the trailer was released, we received many feedback about the slow characters movements during combat, so we made them slightly faster. We realized that, unfortunally, the movements were too "uncoordinated" in the trailer shown, but we are working on it and... we hope you'll enjoy the final result

[Sniffgriff]

I absolutely love the character design and animation in this! Amazing work!

[LadyAbadeer]

I absolutely love the character design and animation in this! Amazing work!

Thank you

[LadyAbadeer]

Hi everybody! There are looots of news about ZHEROS, but we cannot tell you more right now
But, while the adventure goes on, we've added a totally new feature to our Dev Blog: "Meet the Team".
So... why don't you take a look to the Q&A with our animator? Here the link: http://www.zherosgame.com/meet-the-team-animation/

[vladharsan]

WoW!!! blown away!!! really nice graphic... what engine did you use for this game?

[LadyAbadeer]

WoW!!! blown away!!! really nice graphic... what engine did you use for this game?

Thank you! We use Unity 3D 

[LadyAbadeer]

Hi there! Here some development updates:
http://www.zherosgame.com/development-news/

[LadyAbadeer]

Good morning guys! We've just updated the Dev Diary with some development news about ZHEROS. You can read it by clicking on this link: http://www.zherosgame.com/development-news-n-2/

Here the forest concept:


Do you like it? 

[LadyAbadeer]

Hello!
Are you ready to meet some evil guys? 
Read our new Dev Diary by clicking on this link: http://www.zherosgame.com/the-enemies-in-zheros-world/

They are twisted robots and mutations, armed to the teeth and loyal to Dr. Vendetta! 

Here a preview:

Cheers!

[LadyAbadeer]

ZHEROS new trailer - Included in the ID@Xbox program

Hi all!
We finally have a new trailer for ZHEROS, which was shown at the ID@Xbox booths during GDC 2015!

We made some progress, as you can see from the trailer, and this is for us a big step forward.

Check out our new trailer and give us some feedback if you wish 

Here the link:

[Barendhoff]

I love the art! Great job on that. And is the in-game music similar to the trailer music? Because the trailer music is neat, too!

As someone else mentioned, the game seems a little reminiscent of Ratchet of Clank. Does it distinguish itself in other aspects than its specific graphics, story and characters? E.g. unique level design, combat mechanics, upgrade systems?

Keep it up the good work; it looks mighty fine so far!

[LadyAbadeer]

Hi @Barendhoff! The in-game music will be a sort of electronic music too, but a little different from the trailer one.
Yes, someone said that is similar to Ratchet&Clank, but ZHEROS is not a platform. It is a beat'em up, a totally different genre, even if it seems just a platform game. It is based on a different combat system, similar to the 80's and 90's beat'em up(s), and it counts on a wide range of combos you can discover fights after fights.
Less weapons, more physical attacks. I guess they look similar because of the graphic style 

We are trying to distinguish ZHEROS from other games, even if our point of reference are the old-school beat'em up!

[CrayderStudios]

Looks good so far. I'm getting a really strong "The Incredibles" and "Ratchet & Clank" vibe from the art style, which is nice. Good job on that. I like how you've tried to polarize the fighting styles of both your characters, which gives players a reason to pick one or the other.

Generally speaking, I feel that the genre of brawlers/beat-em-up/hack'n'slash has to go to great lengths to ensure the gameplay isn't repetitive. Looking at Devil May Cry (over the top moves), God of War (gore + different weapons/styles), Darksiders I & II (similar to GoW), you can see that these games pile on variety in all facets of their game to prevent the game from being repetitive. You also notice that these games introduce variety as you play the game (earn weapons/moves upon beating bosses) so that you progressively make the game more fun, allowing the player to remain interested as they gain more and more tools to beat enemies. That's another consideration when making brawlers as it has a lot to do with game pacing, giving players cool content at the right points in the game to keep them hooked as brawlers as a genre can easily become repetitive.

Looking at your gameplay, I like the inclusion of the robot mecha which will definitely add some level of depth in your game. But generally I would suggest looking into ways to keep the gameplay fresh with both new ways to defeat enemies (give Mike a cool lariat attack after he defeats a boss for example) that keeps gameplay new and fun. Also consider including enemies that force players to defeat them in certain ways, for example shield warriors that block attacks from the front, forcing players to get up behind them to defeat them. All these little things can add depth to gameplay, which depending on your game's length can keep it just as fresh as when players first boot up Zheros.

These are all suggestions of course. The game's visuals are great, and I hope your project is a success.

[LadyAbadeer]

Hey! All of your considerations are true (and obviously welcome  ) and we worked to add something which can give variety to the game.
This trailer doesn't show them but, for example, there are also the Shielded Screenman, which can be defeated only after you destroyed their shield with a charged heavy attack.
We will also add new combat moves and there will certainly be an upgrade system, both for characters and weapons, to improve them and give to the players the chance to choose their ideal combat style.

As you said, a beat'em up could become boring from time to time, so we're trying to make ZHEROS... as less boring as we can! 

[LadyAbadeer]

Hi everybody! Today's Dev Diary page talks about one of our favourite elements in ZHEROS: the mech. During last days, we had many feedbacks about it, so we tried to explain what is the mech and how we created it.

To read the full article, click here: http://www.zherosgame.com/mechs-co/



Cheers!

[LadyAbadeer]

Hi all! Today I want to show you how our concept artist creates his concepts for ZHEROS: take a look at this time-lapse video!

[Paragonyx]

Hey Rosanna,

The game looks good. How long has the game been in development for?

I wish you guys all the best!

- Alexis

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