Enemy profile: The Bruiser

Hello and welcome back!

This week we'll take a look at the first foe which you'll encounter in Kalaban. It's a hybrid of a man and a canine creature. The 'Bruiser' has no ranged attack. It tries to run you down and starts tearing through your flesh if it does.

As you might've heard, the development of Kalaban officially began in January 2015. Before that we tried to create a sidescroller prototype with simplistic action-adventure elements. But that version seriously lacked meaningful and fun gameplay. So, we decided to take the perspective to this topdown/isometric view, where you can see the action from above, and the enemies can creep on you from all the different angles, instead of just two.

 'Bruiser' has gone through many iterations during the development, since it is the first enemy you see in the game. This current version is its fifth iteration. I've experimented with prerendered graphics during its development, and tried to emulate the hand-drawn style of Bob with various results. The current look of the monster is finally aligned with the overall art direction in the game.

 

When you're creating character graphics and animation, you have to be very conscious of what kind of look you want to achieve. Is your character wobbly? Does it have a limp? Or does it move with a robotic precision? Does it look around and is it aware of its environment? Does the character posses wisdom or intelligence?

The Bruiser is a blunt and mindless mutant, which stumbles around, but slashes its foes with terrifying strength. Its appearance might fool you to think it's almost harmless.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Enemy profile: The Spitter

Howdy folks! It's been a while, so we figured we should post a new update. Let me present a new monster to you - The Spitter!




Designing a character always begins with a sketch; an illustration or just a rough scribble. This particular monster is supposed to be a half-snake and half-human. It spits corrosive acid, hence the name. Our character designer, Vesa-Pekka did the rough sketch, and I made the painted version above. The illustration gives you a basic idea of the character; its poses and the general colours.


The snake which inspired this monster is an adder, which can actually be found from the Finnish nature, and it's one of the only venomous species we have in here. Although Kalaban is set in a fantastical alternate universe, it should be grounded in reality somehow. I like to compare the game's fictional lore to Watchmen, which clearly mirrors the political atmosphere of the era it depicts, but also takes many liberties, like adding sci-fi and comic book elements. Our game deals with a simpler story of course; mutant outbreak in nineties Finland.



Unlike the animations of our main hero, Bob, the enemies will be done in 3D, and then prerendered into 2D sprites. It would simply just be too laborious to animate all the in-game characters by hand. That's why I built this hi-poly model of the character. I posed the model for the animations and then shot it from different angles. I tried my best to simulate the painted, hand-drawn look.


Thanks for tuning in! We've had a long break from Kalaban partially because we've been working on Neurotron, our pocket RPG for Android devices. And also because we've done a huge rehaul to the game overall. All the previous code was essentially scrapped. Now that Neurotron is moving along nicely, we can also get Kalaban back on track.