VeLM
VeLM: A New Teaser Trailer!
We’ve been keeping silent for a long time, but it was for a good reason!
Reworking numerous animations, locations and monsters required quite a bit of effort. And in addition we managed a little technical + sound upgrade, and thus we proudly present to you a new teaser trailer for our project VeLM from our demo build! Thanks for staying with us and feel free to share your opinions!
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Dev logs - what we have made in 2020
The last year wasn’t easy for all of us, and for our small team too. Nevertheless, despite of the spread of disease, we are continuing the development of the VeLM and we want to share our recent achievements with you.
First of all, it’s worth mentioning that GMSLab was joined by newcomers – many new specialists both in art and in other fields. And thanks to their efforts our game step by step is going to look like the good old metroidvania that we all love and enjoy.
The visual has changed dramatically. We decided to move from bleak and dark landscapes to more bright and detailed locations. In addition, we added more vertical platforming and jumping puzzles. For example, in the pictures below you can see how the House of Fire has been changed:
House of Fire concept, February 2020
House of Fire Proto-Build, December 2020
But of course, no adventure can be dangerous without foes. And that is why our artists got inspiration from Mayan mythology in order to inhabit the game’s locations with vicious monsters. Diego will have to face both classic enemies like various skeletons, elemental golems, spooky ghosts, spirits, and with quite unusual creatures – the ferocious Ahuitzotls, the sinister Coatls and the shapeshifter priests who strive to spill blood in the name of their ancient gods. And the most exciting encounters – the boss fights! The House of Fire hosts the demonic twins who command both the might of arms and the power of sorcery, while in the House of Ice the dark Master of decay and the Lord of blight lie in wait, ready to spread the deadly plagues around their unholy domain to every trespasser.
Ahuitzotl of the House of Ice
Ah puch, The Master of Decay
But how will Diego manage to defeat all those mighty enemies? For that exact purpose we’ve developed a wide variety of spells and abilities that he will be able to unlock throughout the game. There will be both tools for exploration (like Double Jump) and elemental magic, such as Fireball, Whirlwind, Water Whip, defensive Barriers, spiky Traps and other spells.
As for the technical aspect, its progress is on a par with the art and animation. Diego and most of his enemies now have their own movesets and are able to interact both with the environment and with each other. The protagonist has learned to gather collectibles, jump and slide on the surfaces. As for the environmental dangers, stalactites were programmed to damage to Diego, and lava pools can instantly kill him!
Last but not least, our team would like to thank you for your support – we continue working on the project against all odds and sincerely hope that you will be able to discover the mysterious world of the VeLM soon. That’s it for our annual report, stay healthy and stay tuned!
Dev logs - News for July-August 2020
Check out Khavi's new look – it's our main character’s spirit guardian:
Now we're actively working on the new level - the House of Jaguar. It's the first location players will visit after the tutorial. Diego will have to make his way through the tropical jungle and ancient ruins to get to the forgotten temple in the end. Our hero will face many obstacles on his way there, ranging from pitfalls with stakes and venomous snakes to poisoned darts and mechanical traps of the ancient temple. In order to make gameplay experience more diverse we decided to add vertical platforming using vines and updrafts. The first concept of the location looked like this:
On this level Diego gets access to Air Element abilities - Double-jump and Cyclone - a spell that allows him hit his enemies with a small tornado at a distance.
And here are the enemies that guard the House of Jaguar:
Here are melee monsters like skeletons, tree spirits and balams that have both bestial and hybrid beast-like forms.
As for the boss fight of this location, Diego will have a vicious fight at the bottom of the temple. He will have to encounter the priests who summon powerful monsters:
Polishing the visuals of the House of Fire:
What we're also working on at the moment is the development of movement physics and the main character's abilities: double-jumping, acceleration, falling down, dying to lava and interacting with traps and objects. As for the abilities, we're planning to finish Water Whip, Cyclone, Fireball, Water and Fire Shields for protection and a spike-trap throwing spell.
Besides a new gameplay trailer is going to be released soon! We have already written down a second-by-second script, chosen the right artwork and arranged the environment elements in order to show you the diversity of locations in the VeLM. We're polishing the build, the editing and the SFX to convey the feeling of a mysterious adventure. Can't wait to share the results with you!
Follow us on social media and share your opinion on the game's development in the comments - we can make VeLM better with your help!
Dev logs - News for June 2020
We'd like to share some July news with you. Any feedback is welcome, as usual :)
• General: we have decided on the approximate time of the VeLM's walkthrough: there will be 6 locations with bosses and puzzles - so all of this is bound to take about 3 hours.
• Camera: we had to decide on the camera's height during various stages: Diego's movement, solving puzzles and boss fights.
• Continue to work on an environment for the House of Fire:
• Some new and flashy animations for our Coal Golem:
• We're working on some new attack patterns for the big boss of the House of Fire:
• We're also designing some new ranged mobs, who throw lava bursts, ice shards or spit poison, and some environment objects, like totems and crystals, that will attack Diego in distance.
• We've made the final decision for the House of Jaguar - we added some new enemies inspired by the great Quetzalcoatl.
Soon we'll also share some more sketches of this location's environment and will finally be able to show you a long-awaited gameplay trailer for VeLM, so make sure to follow our news channels
Dev logs - News for May 2020
Over the month of May we've managed to do and to discuss a lot, and now we are sharing the news with you:
- We've constructed a part of the House of Fire
This contributed us with the basic understanding of the visual style, and helped us initially to make up our minds about lighting (e.g. lava lakes / waterfalls / luminous lava flows, etc.). There are a lot of things to be done, but we are glad that even now you can feel the chamber, a bit gloomy atmosphere.
We've discussed the matters of proportion: ratio of the height of the hero, height / length of his jump, platforms' layout. We are going to keep working on the scale of the monsters, buildings, platforms, etc.
- As well as we keep working on the animation of the main character and his rivals.
Our artists have made the firs sketches of the House of Jaguar. This is the location of the impenetrable jungle inhabited by Skeletons, Jaguar Warriors and other creatures serving the Gods of Darkness.
Concept-arts of new monsters for the House of Jaguar
Liana golem
Jaguar Warrior
Skeleton of the House of Jaguar
- Environment
We've improving the visual of the crushed platforms, have made fallen stalactites, finalized ruined buildings and crystals for lightning of the location. We've worked on the basic shapes and colors of platforms and environments. Then-Now
We've reworked lava one more time, decided to leave the first option, since it is more suitable for the style of the game.
- Our game-designers are keeping working on the boss-fight. They've completed the flowchart describing what awaits the player at this stage; made some sketches, approved Terms of reference for artists and animators.
So, the work is keep going. Wait for the news about our project!
Thank you for any feedback for us!
Have a nice day!
Dev logs - News for April 2020
In general, our main task now is to finish two locations: The House of Fire and The House of Ice. In April our artists finished the concept of the mobs for these locations. Frequent adversary, which you are going to face playing our game, would be skeletons. Here they are in the flesh. Now we are working on animation.
Besides, the environment for both these locations is also under construction.
We’ve started the development of the boss-fight for The House of Fire. Our game designers have been thinking over this important part of the gameplay for a long time: boss-fight isn’t only a fight with a strengthened enemy, but it’s also a puzzle, where winning conditions for a player are going to be changeable. Thereof it takes a lot of time to finish this boss-fight.
We continue working on our social media content. For instance, our Unity-developer has created funny comics about his job and bugs he met.
And the main thing – we are going to show you our first playable demo soon, that’s why keep in touch.
Have a great day and stay safe and healthy!
Dev Logs: our first presentation at DAT-Fest 2020
At this event there was a great amount of different activities: informative lectures, presentations, stands, etc. Though we hadn’t a lot of experience in public speaking, our performance was scheduled at the primetime, and we were nervous as hell very excited. We hope our presentation was splendid and we had managed to answer all the questions afterwards – about setting of the VeLM, features of a boss fight, and about choosing Steam as a distribution platform.
We had told about our team: how we are learning to evaluate our game from the developer’s point of view. How we had made the decision to develop exactly platformer with the setting of Mayan mythology, and what we had invented to make our game unique.
Talking about platformers, it’s all about variation in moving and attacking. We would like to add some supernatural in our game. Our main characters – a boy, named Diego, and his spirit guardian Khavi are going to the Mayan underworld Xibalba. Without Khavi Diego is able only to a melee-attack using his dagger, but united with his patron he become to master all four elements.
Thus, every location (for example destroyed temple inside of active volcano or dense jungle) has a specific feature, which make them differ from another not only by style, but also by giving a player possibility to use different skill-combination during the walkthrough. Every element grant Diego with new abilities for more effective platforming and combating.
For making every boss fight more special, we will add to it a puzzle-solving element. Bosses, whose design is inspired by Mayan mythology, would have 2-3 phases, moreover every phase would include a pattern to explore for dealing damage to a boss.
For instance: at first a player needs to reach for some environment element and destroy it, and it helps to find out the weak points of a boss, where he can be hit. Thus, it takes some time to find out all patterns of a boss and the best way how to fight him.
The whole game will be consisted of 6 levels, which included 7 locations, 20 kinds of mobs and 7 bosses with unique abilities. The main character will receive 15 abilities for both movement and damage. Besides we are going to add some metroidvania elements – like backtracking the location in search of secret rooms and additional paths after getting new abilities, which makes the exploring of the Xibalba more interesting.
We would like to thank the convention’s team and audience for warm welcome. It was such a pleasure to discuss our own game not only inside a team, but with strangers too. At the moment like that we realize that there is no way back, and all of our promises need to have been kept.
A pleasant surprise for us was the fact that our presentation was estimated by Russian regional Ubisoft general director Olga Lazareva, who commended our idea and our detailed answers to asked questions.
Taking part in DAT-Fest 2020 was a significant experience for us, we had got feedback and motivation for keeping working on our project improvement. Thanks for reading and see you at new events!
Dev logs - News for March 2020
So, last month was very eventful for us:
- Firstly, we found new people for very important positions:
Two Unity-developers joined our team. We hope they are going to compile our first functioning build in the shortest time. If so, soon we will be able to show you a part of gameplay.
Since our game focuses a lot on the artistic component, one more talented artist joined us for visual design of mobs and bosses. Here are her first sketches of Icy Skeletons for the Cold House of Xibalba.
- Secondly, our Project Manager made the unite structure in Atlassian Confluence. It means that we have all materials concerning our project within one wiki, which will make our further work more convenient.
- Thirdly, game designers keep working on mobs’ mechanics: for every level of the game mobs will differ in variety. Moreover, they will challenge a player by forcing him to use new abilities of the Main character, which he will get after making progress through each level.
- VeLM took part in DAT Fest 2020.
During a speech at the convention we told about our inner experience in platforming-making: how to become a full-fledged team and work on creating games, without any experience. We were nervous but excited to present our speech and seemed we’ve done well. Our presentation was highly appreciated by Russian regional Ubisoft General Director Olga Lazareva, it makes us more motivated to continue the work on the project.
- And finally, we’ve got a plan for promotion. Our marketer analyzed different social networks and communities within them, and now we’ve figured out where we should tell about VeLM.
Around the world people are working from home now because of spread of Covid-19 disease.
The most part of our team has already moved to a new mode of operation, so that's why we can devote some more time to our project.
In general, the work is in full swing! Stay tuned for our news and updates and stay safe!