It's a bit more in vogue now but when I started Dusk four-ish years ago, I think the only other game really shooting for that same thing was Strafe. Even a decade ago when it was both woefully out of date and a long way from being fashionably retro, I adored how games like Quake and Chasm: The Rift looked. Second, I just really really love that low poly software rendered look. Making it look like Doom 2016 was never an option. The reasoning was twofold: first, I am one guy and I make my assets either from scratch or as near to scratch as I can get. And that's without even getting into Dave's contributions: there's an entire level layout pattered after a dungeon in Planescape: Torment, for instance. There's a lot of Deus Ex and Thief in Dusk, as well as STALKER and even some Condemned. And from other sorts of games too, from other eras. I basically just went nuts taking elements I liked from various 90s shooters and either referencing them or wholesale stealing them. The climbing powerup was partially informed by the Alien in AvP/ AvP2. Several levels take cues from Daikatana (yes really!). Like, the blood effects do the "particle arc" thing you see in older Lithtech games like Blood 2 and Shogo. My go-to answer is always "pick any game from about 1993 to 2001 and it's probably inspired Dusk in some way." Obviously all the big ones: Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Duke, Blood, etc., etc., etc.īut lesser-known ones also. I don't think it's the sort of thing that would work for every game but for Dusk, a game about getting back to basics and trimming the fat, it felt like an appropriate start. Just in a way that encourages them to immediately engage with the game instead of spending 15 minutes responding to onscreen tool tips. It is giving players a chance to warm up: it gets them familiar with the basic controls, movement speed, and enemy behavior. Provided they were on an appropriate difficult level and provided they have at least some basic knowledge of standard FPS controls, I don't think I've ever seen a player die there more than once or give up without getting past the first room. You have plenty of health and morale ( Dusk's version of armor) and room to kite enemies around, and even if you do end up dying once it's pretty obvious what you have to do the next time around. You get thrown into the deep end from moment one.īut it's sort of a fake deep end. Were you worried throwing monsters at the player immediately at game start?Īt first yeah, before we watched anyone play or got the game into players' hands. After years in development including a period in Early Access, Dusk finally hit full release a month ago. We talked to creator, programmer, level builder and game designer David Szymanski about this successful Quake homage. Szymanski explains his game in his words.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |