Ours, full of news and a lot of different games! Here's the video recap I did telling you about the most important milestones we had at Saibot Studios (IT INCLUDES ENGLISH SUBTITLES):
Out of Bounds is a peculiar title that was originally created for a game jam the past year (Epic Megajam 2021). As a solo dev, I had 7 days to create a game that was later released for free on Itchio.
Since I liked the result of the jam, I decided to keep working on that idea for the next months and also some great devs (former colleagues from other projects) joined me to get the best results in visuals (Viktor Ahmed and Claudio "Scuzzo" Sagrera) and audio (David Levill) 🙌
THE GAME
Out of Bounds is a title about "creating" a game and "fixing" bugs... Yeah, it's crazy. You will pickup blueprints, compile shaders, test sound effects, drink a lot of coffee. But watch out for the bugs! Grab your Line Tracer and get rid of them 👾
https://youtu.be/U7Q1M-wRbMg
Things are starting to get better here in Saibot Studios and Out of Bounds is part of that process. I'm looking forward to bring you news about bigger projects in the future, but for now give a chance to this crazy puzzle shooter with humor and puzzles 🤓
You can follow Out of Bounds on its new Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/OutOfBoundsVg
Hello there! How are you? How's your 2022 so far? 😎
From here, we have a few things to tell you...
As we mentioned you in our last post, this year we reached an entire decade since we started making games as an independent team in Saibot Studios. But it was just now that we actually make something special to celebrate it. Check out the special video!
Buying the games from the bundle, gives you a 15% of discount on all the titles. And if you already have one or more of the games included in the package, it will discount you the titles you're missing without needing to buy the entire bundle 👌
TENEBRIS SOMNIA
On the other hand, we receently announced our new creation: Tenebris Somnia. This is a very unique title by the great Andrés Borghi, creator of The Black Heart 🖤
We're developing this project Andrés and I (Tobías Rusjan), together with a great team of artists. You can read more about it and the dev team in this other post we did the past week.
If you like the concept of the game, don't forget to add it to your Wishlists. We're aiming to have it ready during 2023 👍
In the mean time, I keep working on my little jam game Out of Bounds, a rare title with action, shooting and puzzles. We released a demo in June and it's still available to check directly from the store page:
This month we received the great news from our (now) former publishers that they're giving us back the IP of Hellbound 🤯
What does this mean?
Finally, we at Saibot Studios are going to start receiving sales from Hellbound on Steam. Since the release of 2020, all the sales went to the publisher because that was what we stablished: they recoup their investment first, and then we split; but we never reached that last step because they never recoup their part with the sales we had.
But now after two years from the release, they're giving us back the game so we can atleast see some of the sales. Also, we got back the full rights of the project to take any desision we want from now on 🔥
In March of this year there was the Best of Boomer Shooters Bundle, the first collection of Humble Bundle focused on retro FPSs. Hellbound had the honour to be included in that package, becoming the first argentinian game in participate in the iconic Humble Bundle:
https://youtu.be/ndqIlyYFVJM
Both the sales from this collection and also the sales from now on (September of 2022) at Steam are going to us at Saibot. Yes, finally!
But unfortunately, this aren't earnings for us yet, since we still need to recoup all we put to create the Hellbound: Survival Mode in 2016-2018.
So the future of Hellbound is still uncertain... The good thing is that everything has started looking brighter now, we'll see how things turn for our Hellgore in the next months 🤞
That would be all for now, people. Hope we have some more news for you soon, follow us in our networks to stay updated:
Hello, people! How are you? How did you started 2022? 🤓
In a day like today, but from 2012, we officially started a crazy adventure called Saibot that continues to date.
Actually, the very begginning was in 2011 with the conceptualization and prototype of what ended up being our first title Doorways (read more).
But it wasn't until March of 2012 that, after I partened with my Uncle and friend Ivan Rusjan, we finally started working as a team. We built the first Saibot "office", which was actually my room along side the bed and at my Mom's department, and we used some old tables as desks that my Grandma gave us ❤️
And from then, a lot of enechdotes and experiences started hapenning. With tons of fails and drop downs, but also with some wins, we were able to keep going to date doing what we love the most: creating our own games and delivering them all over the world 🌎
So I decided to take some time to build and share with you a quick recap of some of the main milestones we have achieved together with you during the last 10 years of Saibot...
2012: The Origin
Started the team and office with only two members (picture)
Started the development of the first game and saga: Doorways
First public presentation of the game at the event EVA 2012
Left: Tobias Rusjan (me), right: Martin Voychisko
2013: Prelude
Trip to E3 thanks to a contest we won at Indies Crash E3
Approval of our first game at Steam Greenlight after a lot of big Youtubers played it
Official launch of Doorways: Prelude on Steam (first argentinian game to be released on Steam after being approved on Greenlight)
Launch of VR (virtual reality) version of Doorways: Prelude with the Oculus Rift Dev Kit 1 (first argentinian game published with VR compatibility)
Team member David Levill decided tattoo himself the logo of "Doorways" on his skin because of the love he had to the project (picture)
Tattoo painted by Fernando Muzzio (main artist from Hellbound) over the left arm of David Levill (music director and SFX composer)
2017: New Beginning
New team members were introduced for a much bigger project in Hellbound
Recorded motion captures (MoCap) for animations of Hellbound (Hell Knights, Vladers)
Built and published Hellbound's teaser trailer (picture). For the creation of this particular video, we did live action takes as references, then did motion captures (MoCap), and finally rendered everything with high quality specs; everything done here in Argentina 🇦🇷
Built and sent all around the world the Kickstarter physical rewards of Hellbound: game big box, hardcover artbook, CD with soundtrack, stickers, posters and t-shirts
And this right here is just a quick recap... We thank you all of you for being part of this adventure, for playing our games, for sharing them or just for writing and supporting us 🙌
We have more news to reveal you soon. So follow us on our social networks!
I wanted to let you know about the projects in which we're currently working at Saibot Studios. Let's start with the one next to release...
THE BLACK HEART (OCT 2021)
The game The Black Heart, created in its majority by Andrés Borghi, a very talented multimedia artist with whom we had the pleasure to work with for promotional videos of Doorways and Hellbound.
The past year we joined forces with Andres to publish his masterpiece on Steam. We started with Early Access, we kept improving the game and we finally got a definitive version ready to launch 🙌
The full game release is next Thursday: October 21. IN LESS THAN A WEEK!
So go to the store page and take a look. And if you like it, add the game to your Wishlist:
By the way, the new cover for The Black Heart was made by one of the main artists of Hellbound: the great Fernando Muzzio
And the music for the release version is going to be remastered by the sound especialist of Doorways and Hellbound: David Levill
OUT OF BOUNDS (EARLY 2022)
On my side, during August I participated in the Unreal Megajam 2021, and I managed to create a little full game on my own in just 7 days 🤯
You can play that version for free on Itchio; but since I really liked the results, I decided to keep working on this project and to invite another great former-Saibot so we can get the game to the next level: the master of art Viktor Ahmed
The idea is to keep improving it for a couple of months and release a new version during early 2022. So if you like it, add it to your Wishlist as well!
And outside Saibot, our friends and coleagues who helped us in the past with our games created together Pal'Sur Studios. They are working on an action RPG that looks and plays spectacular 👌
I had the luck to play directly with the creators. So I can really recommend you to add it to your wishlist as well, without a doubt:
On the other hand, there're some cases were the game freezes during the loading screen because you're trying to load a saved game from an old version (v1.1.2 or earlier). If this is happening to you, I need you to send me your save files via email. To locate those files, just copy-paste-enter the next line into your Windows Explorer: %localappdata%\Hellbound\Saved\SaveGames
Send me the most recent files you see there (or just all of them), I will check them and then send you back the ones fixed. Email: contact@hellboundgame.com
And to finish the week, here are some AMAZING shots made by a gamer from Steam by the name of BFG-12000 🙌
How are you, demonic creatures from the depths of Hell! ? 😈
During the last months we have been working with our friends at 3ogs (Pablo and Mauricio Navajas) and with our talented art director Viktor Ahmed, to bring you that thing you've been asking for a long time...
I also recreated the language system entirely, and added (finally) our own natal-Argentinian Spanish option. And a bunch of other fixes and improvements have been made to the game. Check out the entire list on the bottom of this post 👇
I want to take this opportunity to share with you our last Kickstarter update, where I did a recap about all the things we have accomplished together during the last years: Don't miss it, here's the link!
As I mentioned in that post, I want to start working on a new project next month.
Hellbound has been without a doubt an incredible journey for us at Saibot Studios. But unfortunately, we haven't seen a single sale from it, since the third party investment was never recouped. So this right here is probably our last update, or at least for now.
You can follow us on our social networks to stay in touch with us and to keep updated on new things to come: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and You Tube.
Once again, I want to thank you all who have been supporting us during this time. This has been a wonderful era in our careers, with a ton of anecdotes and experiences to share ✊
And now... Let's get those freaking achievements unlocked!
Spanish language option added for all texts, including in-game and interfaces
Steam Cloud added for saved games, progress and input settings
Bug fixes:
Input configuration resets every time you reopen the game
Video quality preset sometimes appears empty and doesn't work properly
In configuration pages the scroll menus and the focused option reset everytime the unsaved-changes-window appears
Sometimes enemies die or crash the game when a door closes above them (thank you Franco Venica for the report)
Pygon enemies appear freezed after specific saved game
Pygon enemies keep attacking after you die
Green light at catacombs entrance turns off after loading a saved game on campaign level 3 The Heroes' Cemetery
Colliseum side doors can be open manually in campaign level 3 The Heroes' Cemetery
When falling down the final sector of campaign level 4 Dead Forest, screen fades black but have to wait several minutos to die
Top switch for main elevator can only be used once at campaign level 5 Flying Souls
Clipping floors on the sides of the survival arena at campaign level 6 City of Fury
Color lights from exit door turning off after loading a saved game at campaign level 6 City of Fury
Sometimes after finishing the survival arena of campaign level 6 City of Fury, the final door doesn't open
The ending text sometimes doesn't finish to show entirely before the screen fades to black
Grotesque quality for textures is showing Low quality textures for some graphic cards
First time you reset the video settings, gamma goes down to 0
After finishing the campaign, the camera changes the field of view (zooms in) affecting the entire game until restart
Voices, Power Up pickups and cinematic sound effects are not affected by the SFX Volume from audio settings
Ferlord is not being able to attack when the player is between his legs
General improvements:
Item Ammo Pack now gives you +20 Slugs, +6 Shells, +40 Bullets and +4 Rockets (same as individual ammo boxes combined)
Added "All clear" message after finishing a survival arena from the campaign
Multiple spawns at the same time during survivals are now well distributed in different locations
Input keys updated on screen messages Loading Screens and Interactions based on the current configuration settings
Video settings reorganized, simplified, and only working when applied
Little tweaks and fixes over menues and interface: Correct difficulty name on Load Game screen, Secret Discovered pop-up empty offsets on the sides, updated Quit Screen for demons
Smooth disapparition added to chunks of useless weapons, exploding fruits (pumpkins) and container fruits (green onions)
Credits margins fixed and finishing properly on different screen resolutions
Damage area of Rocket Launcher's projectiles increased from 200-800 to 500-1000
Ferlord's energy projectiles slowered down in speed (50%), but increased in size (150%)
