When designing Clash we knew from the get go that choosing not to implement waypoints / guided instructions / fast travel / etc, (and asking people to actually explore the world on foot to figure out where to go), was a challenging proposition. The norm in game development (for years) has been telling players where to go and when.
We made the very best effort to make our game world as intuitive as possible without spoiling it all with a guided mechanic that holds your hand.
But we understand that getting lost for hours isn't fun, so we'd like to ask players who have beaten the game (or played a lot) to share which locations they felt were hard to navigate or find. We are compiling info and will add some assets in our level design to help lead people in the right direction in upcoming game updates. Rest assured this is only moving around decorations / adding a colorful asset, or a sign... not introducing a "guided" exploration mechanic.
Screenshots / descriptions / anything... we appreciate any info that can be used to help make the game better for everyone, while remaining true to its vision. ːsteamhappyː
Patch Note — v28402
Greetings everyone!
A small patch has just been pushed to Steam to fix a number of issues that were reported to us. Here's what changed:
Added confirmation pop-up for assigning skill points and figurines.
Fixed Boy disappearing after the Palace Cinematic. For corrupt save files visiting the area where Claw Boss is located restores the Boy.
Fixed Boss not responding after being attacked in night phase.
Added additional facial animations and lip syncing to Pseudo and other characters.
Fixed enemy physics bug where they could be pushed at a great distance.
Fixed first person camera pain animation not showing up.
Dead enemies no longer collide with invisible walls.
Fixed water volumes sometimes not working.
Improved smoke artifact Player vs Enemy (enemies strike each other accidentally)
Fixed issues with hard lock in first person mode.
Fixed foot placement "jittering" and collision detection for giant enemies.
Improved enemy placement for non-targeted enemies in first person mode.
Titan mammoth has updated hitboxes and less predictable attack patterns
Credits updated.
We want to thank you for your cooperation and patience, and hope you're having a grand time in the lands of Zenozoik.
Gameplay Overview
In the vicious world of Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, you can only be one of two things: hunter or prey. 👊
Here's some new gameplay, featured in today's Nacon Connect. You can also check the Steam stream for more!
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is NOW OUT on Steam! Explore the badlands of Zenozoik, flatten your foes with fearsome fighting techniques, and protect what you hold dearest! 👊
You'll be able to see some exclusive gameplay of Clash: Artifacts of Chaos tomorrow during the Nacon Connect, along some other incredibly good lookin games. Go on the YouTube link and click on the "Notify Me" button to not miss it!
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos — Steam Deck VERIFIED
If you've ever wanted to bash some Corwids' heads in on the go — or during potty — rest assured: Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is Steam Deck VERIFIED! ✅
If you own a Steam Deck, all you'll need is to own a copy of Clash: Artifacts of Chaos in your Steam account! Then, you'll be all set to play the game wherever you go.
The game will be available March 9, 2023. You can wishlist it now:
Hello everyone, and welcome to this dev blog about a topic we often get asked about: our game’s stylized rendering!
Video games can use many different styles to create a unique look and feel. For Clash, we knew from the beginning that we wanted to use a very colorful and non-realistic one for many reasons: to set it apart from other games in the genre, to allow us to stylize and exaggerate the animation and color palette, and to approximate the illustrations and punk-fantasy art that inspired the creation of the world in the first place.
Stylized rendering is a powerful tool that highlights that “What to draw?” and “How to draw it?” are two different questions. This is the third time we have visited the surreal world of Zenozoik and its primitive humanoid animal inhabitants, but it is the first time we are approaching the “how to draw it” with a really different technique!
There are many ways we could have gone, and we tested several different styles before landing on the one we used. By choosing what to simplify and what to exaggerate, you get very different effects. One of the more interesting styles we tested was a painterly thick brushstroke look.
It allowed very expressive shapes, a messy almost impressionistic look, and was certainly very different. We eventually decided against this style because of the excessive simplification it produced: our artists always wanted to add more small details to characters and environments, details which would not really shine in this impressionistic style.
The rendering style we ended up going for is called hatching, or crosshatching. It is a drawing style that creates shading and conveys lighting by drawing closely spaced lines. The closer the lines are together, the darker the area will appear. This style is often used in traditional drawings, illustrations, and comic books, and gives the artwork a hand-drawn look. This technique allowed us to achieve an illustrated style while still preserving detail.
By separating the lighting information and conveying light intensity and detail mostly with the ink pencil linework, we can treat color as a separate layer. This allows us to use more artificial color schemes which would look strange in a realistic rendering style but feel consistent with the look of an illustration. Violet and orange skies, characters with blue or yellow skin, orange dirt, cyan and green mineral deposits in the mountain walls… we intentionally use saturated colors, or color combinations hard to find in nature to convey this is a different world.
One of the main challenges to make the hatching style work was to make sure that it worked at different distances and different levels of detail. It is not just drawing lines on the surfaces, because what works for small details up close might not work for a mountain at a distance.
Also some features must be preserved more carefully, like character eyes which are a focus point and must always remain well defined and sharp. The linework needs to be consistent to seem like it was all done with the same tool.
Finally, while we have designed a very specific look for the game, we still chose to enable configuration options for players to personalize the look. Players can choose a cleaner look or add and remove effects. We even left in a comic book inspired black and white mode, which is not ideal for readability, but is still very cool to play with!
Less than one month are left until the launch and we look forward to all of you playing and exploring the world we created. If you wish to follow other news and future dev blogs, don’t hesitate to follow us on Twitter or join our official Discord server. And as always, feel free to let us know what you think in the Steam discussions board, we can’t wait to hear it!
- Edmundo Bordeu, Art Director at ACE Team
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos previews are here!
Release day is getting closer and closer, and previews are already here!
We have a quick announcement regarding the DLCs and editions of the game.
Some of you may have noticed that pre-orders for Clash are available on consoles, but not on PC. However, it does not mean we are forgetting you! On Steam, the pre-order bonus DLC will be instead given for free to everyone who purchases the game during the first month after launch:
Additionally, we want to let you know about the contents of the Zeno Edition: a copy of the game, a supporter pack, including two armours that should remind you of Metamoq, a known character in the Zeno Clash games, a digital artbook and the OST of the game!
Thank you for your support, and see you all in Zenozoik on March 9!
Corwid Fight Gameplay Trailer
In Clash: Artifacts of Chaos. you'll encounter many foes during your journey with the Boy. Some of them will be Corwids, a mob of peculiar individuals willing to fight you for what they want.
