next »

[xdavidleon]

Hi all,

I'm David León from Barcelona and I've spent the last year making a next gen quality game named Path of Shadows.



Path of Shadows is a stealth game inspired by the Tenchu saga and the Journey & Okami art style. You must control the shadows to progress in your journey.

We are a team of 5 at the Game Creation Master Degree (Pompeu Fabra University), mainly 3 programmers & 2 artists. Our objective was to have a 20min final quality demo, and we are going to submit it to the IGF's Student section. I don't know if we have any chances, as past winners were always more "artsy" games, but we don't lose a thing by trying





Right now you can get the current build from here: http://thepathofshadows.com/files/pathofshadows.zip

Any feedback is appreciated.

Here are some links. I'm a bit new to TIGSource so I don't know how to format them better

Official Webpage: http://thepathofshadows.com/
Screenshots Album: http://imgur.com/a/eHUUP
Video of final gameplay (watch in 1080p! :D)



To keep updated to this work or other of my stuff follow:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/xDavidLeon
Tumblr: http://xdavidleon.tumblr.com/

[Games Inquirer]

Tenchu is one of my all time favorites, it was painful to see the series grow stagnant instead of evolve and better itself (imagine if history had gone differently and we were looking at a Tenchu V: The Phantom Pain/Ground Zeroes these days). But its core gameplay is still super fun so keep it up and good luck.

The tutorial walkthrough (the most recent video) makes it look really polished already, though I'm a little disappointed you employ things like x-ray vision as if it's a modern sequel, Thief style. Still, it suits your supernatural setting and themes, this isn't Tenchu itself after all, where it was sticking to relative realism and didn't even have a radar like MGS, instead requiring you to survey by rooftops or around corners.

Will you have open levels like that, villages and things as in Tenchu, or stick to a more linear approach like Splinter Cell and other such stealth games, focusing on smaller more detailed and meaningful areas instead?

[xdavidleon]

There are 3 scenarios: The Graveyard (tutorial), The Village and The Courtyard.

The game is mainly for portfolio (and learning), so if we take that and the time constraint, we must be sure that every piece of modelling etc we make should be easily visible in every playthrough. Either way, we don't like "corridors" in a stealth game, so we made "small" scenarios with different ways for beating the level. Different paths that converge.

Here's some screenshots from The Village: http://imgur.com/a/Wg6qQ



And here's The Courtyard: http://imgur.com/a/eXJwn



About the "special vision". We weren't going to have any kind of 'x-ray mechanic' and we also didn't want a 'radar', but some user testing showed us that players 1- got lost easily 2- got 'surprised' by enemies too easily. So.. we had to put the 'special vision', but you can only use it when you are in the shadows. Also (not shown in the video) you can summon a raven that guides you to your current objective via pathfinding.

[AndyBumpkin]

Wow that looks really awesome! The shadow teleport mechanic especially looks great.

[xdavidleon]

Wow that looks really awesome! The shadow teleport mechanic especially looks great.

The teleport mechanic "visuals" were a mess until the last milestone.
We had a first implementation where you levitated and then teleported instantly; in the next iteration the player went into the floor and came out from the other side; in the next one.. the player exploded into a particle system of "shadows" and these flew to the objective.

In the last 2 weeks of development we threw everything out and implemented this "flash" teleport, inspired by Dishonored and Final Fantasy XV.

You can see the first horrible attempts in this video around 1:06 :

[AndyBumpkin]

Ah interesting stuff!  Always interesting to watch feature progress like that

[xdavidleon]

We uploaded a public build & the IGF Trailer here:

[lonewolf]

We uploaded a public build & the IGF Trailer here:

This is looking really amazing keep up the good work!

[xdavidleon]

Thanks again Lone Wolf, you are everywhere hahaha
:D

[ANtY]

the gifs from the first post are fucking amazing, well done

[xdavidleon]

Found some good gifs at NeoGAF forums.

[rundown]

Looks great. Downloaded it and didn't had any problems running the game what so ever. I'd love to see more of you guys in the future!

[M.C.THUGZ]

what if my video card istn giood neough to render the shadow is there stil gameplay mechanic?

dis game funded by israel and mossad

[Christian]

Hey, you guys are on TIGForums, cool! Love your game, hope you'll be able to find funding. Keep up the good work!

[lonewolf]

LOL I try to be!  Really though love the work you guys have done, really refreshing to see!

Thanks again Lone Wolf, you are everywhere hahaha
:D

[Eljugganot]

This looks amazing. Good luck in the competition.

[xdavidleon]

Path of Shadows has been Greenlit!

I guess I'll start a devlog soon

[oldboy_sagat]

That looks amazing.  Just out of interest, what engine are you building it on?

[xdavidleon]

All we've shown is made using a custom engine in C++.
We are now porting everything to Unity3D.

[xdavidleon]

The concept of Path of Shadows has evolved into a commercial project: Twin Souls.
I started a devlog, you can see it here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40671