The Versus Evil Winter Sale is now live on Steam! Get up to 90% off!
As we head into 2024, let's have a bit of a retrospective, shall we? 2023 marks 10 years since Versus Evil was founded, and we've built quite the portfolio over the last decade. We look back on early titles such as Yaga, Cardpocalypse, and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire; we look back on recent notable titles such as First Class Trouble, Eville, and UnMetal; and now, we look forward to our upcoming slate of new releases such as Lil' Guardsman, Tamarak Trail, and Broken Roads. Whether you've been playing our games the day we started or are now just joining the fun, thank you for being on this journey with us. We're forever grateful.
The Versus Evil Autumn Sale is now live on Steam! Get up to 90% off!
While you're browsing our catalog, why not check out our slate of upcoming titles if you haven't already:
Broken Roads is a narrative-driven RPG that brings exploration, strategic turn-based combat and meaningful philosophical choices to an all-new Australian post-apocalyptic setting.
In Lil' Guardsman, imagine you're a 12-year-old, suddenly in charge of the guard shed at the castle gate, where you decide if elves, goblins and 100+ other characters should be admitted. It's a wonderful combination of deduction, narrative and puzzle games.
Tamarak Trail is a deck-building roguelike where you'll use a customizable dice set as you battle through randomly generated trails full of loot, mysteries, and danger to protect inhabitants from the evil that has corrupted the trail.
Last, but certainly not least, introducing our most recently announced title, Monolith: Requiem of the Ancients! Journey across Gliese, a mystical world under threat by dark forces in this vibrant, action RPG. With the power of the Runic Swarm in your hands, crush the minions of evil on your path to fulfill your destiny and become the planet's savior.
If you're discovering our games for the first time or missed past sales, now's the perfect time to get in!
We're kicking off a new mini-series of trailers for the playable origin stories, starting with Hired Gun!
Broken Roads features four origin stories each with their own unique attributes, starting skills, and reputation around the world which changes how certain characters interact with you.
Check out our first Origin Story trailer here:
Expect more trailers coming soon!
And if you’re wondering ‘hey Drop Bear Bytes, where’s your October update?', we’ve been non-stop busy making the game, adding polish, fixing bugs, closing out quests, wrapping up loose ends, recording videos, conducting media interviews, playtesting the game, and so on. There’s your update - now let us get back to it!
- The Drop Bear Bytes team
Environment Design Process: Ardath Hotel Devblog
The Ardath Pub is a characterful establishment where a motley crew of artists, thieves, and thugs congregate to drink, play darts and get up to mayhem. To bring this place to life, Sara Laubscher, Lead Environment Concept Artist, worked closely with our Narrative Director, Leanne Taylor-Giles, in order to maintain an authentic ‘Aussie vibe’. Through pokie machines and a pool-table-turned-impromptu music stage around the back, we aimed to demonstrate the rowdy charm of the Ardath way of life.
We heavily referenced the real-life Ardath Hotel pub, which Leanne had personally visited. Sara created the concept that served as our blueprint, using isometric illustration techniques and photobashing renders of props we had already made for the game, in order to get the main ideas, mood and structure of the environment across as efficiently as possible.
Here are some images of the real Ardath pub:
Art Lead Bianca Roux expertly translated this room’s design into a 3D model using Maya and ZBrush to add the sculpted details:
Following this, Sara textured the scene in Adobe Substance Painter, maintaining the game's painterly style by applying gestural paint strokes in the grotty corners of the room, peeling paint and some graffiti on the walls for added authenticity.
Finally, Ryan Gee brought it all together in Unity, meticulously set dressing the scene to match the concept art and infusing it with additional environmental storytelling and mood-enhancing lighting. This collaborative process ensured that our interior scene not only remained true to the unique charm of the game’s narrative but also added depth to our post-apocalyptic Australian world as a whole.
We’ll have more to show soon in the September 2023 Update. You can also catch the Drop Bear Bytes art team on a live stream as part of the Melbourne International Games Week Steam Event live at the following times on Wednesday, 27 September :
5:00pm (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane) 3:00pm (Perth) 9:00am (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Barcelona, Warsaw) 8:00am (London) 3:00am (New York) 12:00am midnight (Los Angeles, San Francisco)
Thanks for reading. We hope to catch you on the live stream and answer any questions you may have!
- The Drop Bear Bytes team
Join us for our MIGW Livestreams!
Hey folks, we're doing a couple livestreams next week for Melbourne International Games Week and would love it if you joined us! Meet the dev team, the art team, ask us questions, and more!
Our first livestream will be the dev teams live AMA on Wednesday, September 27th at 9am AEST!
After that, our art team will be doing a live stream at 5pm AEST the same day!
For our North American friends, those dates are:
Live AMA: September 26th, 4pm PDT Art Stream: September 27th, Midnight PDT
Melbourne International Games Week Starts Now!
We're excited to announce that we're taking part in MIGW again this year!
MIGW is hosting its third annual Steam festival to highlight the broad range of video games developed in Victoria, Australia! Join us for a celebration of videogames and the people who make them from September 21 - 28, here on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/migw2023
The event will be featuring demos, sales & live streams so be sure to check it out!
The Broken Roads team will be hosting their own live stream next week for the event, details coming soon!
Release Date Announcement
We’re excited to announce that Broken Roads is coming to PC, Xbox One & Series X/S on November 14, 2023! Embark on an unforgettable journey across a post-apocalyptic Australia full of danger and tough decisions.
Stay tuned for release date information on other platforms coming soon!
It’s the end of August and that means Gamescom again! We sent a small crew to Cologne to show off Broken Roads to European press as part of the Australian contingent in IGEA’s booth and were very stoked to see Broken Roads’ key art blown up huge on the stand walls.
We demo’d Broken Roads for three days straight, met a ton of fellow developers working on some awesome projects, took a quick look at what the AAA studios are up to, and of course checked out the most intriguing new indie games in the works.
One of the highlights of this year’s event was showing off the localised build to European journalists and getting their take on the quality of the translations - and we’re very happy to say feedback was extremely positive. Broken Roads will launch in numerous languages - English, French, German, Russian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish (LatAm) - and seeing people enjoy the game in their own languages was great.
Gamescom is that strange mix of fun and exhausting, where you can’t wait for it to start and then you find yourself really relieved once it’s all over. We had a blast, but now it’s back to work on the last few months before launch!
(Above) The line for wishlisting Broken Roads was longer than ever this year.
A big thanks to all the journalists who have been covering Broken Roads. We’ve already seen a few articles start to drop:
