lineus Tech tips coverage of pxs 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital Intel
and steel series hey guys we're here at the Indie Mega Booth checking out as tez
I had to check this game out not only because the art style looks amazing but
there's blood everywhere and that's just awesome so what can you tell me about
this game so ases is a it's actually two games it's a beat them up and also a
strategy game so the idea is that you're going to go back and forth between the
two going to have some fun real time beat them up segments and then kind of
make some decisions and and think a little bit um the reason we did that
it's just cuz we're tired of the standard beat them up formula and just want to see something new so for sure
what can you tell me more about the the building mode or the the the nation
controlling mode so you're basically going to be looking at a giant map of
the Aztec empire shortly before the Spanish show up and the idea is that
you're you're going to be pushing on the boundaries of the Empire trying to expand it but also managing chaos so
when it happens you're going to enter one of the many City environments and
and knock some heads around so you know it's kind of the way the Aztec did
things Yeah so basically if someone messes with your Turf you go knock them
out which sounds pretty cool yeah exactly now one thing is when you go to
knock these guys out you can control different characters can you tell me more about that you're actually
controlling a like a Special Forces Unit almost so this is just like a very very
powerful get in there make a mess send the message get out um but when it's all
said and done you'll be able to look however you want you'll be able to use
one of four different weapons we want it to be very expressive and feel like it's
it's you know you're making a ision and it's a reflection of you but but it is
just a uh a non-descript special forces Warrior so that's cool that's cool I
noticed again you said making a mess uh
as I mentioned earlier there's blood everywhere what can you tell me about the blood mechanic so the reason there's
a blood mechanic because the Aztecs were very very big on blood it was actually
part of their religious belief system um they believed that the sun was moving
through the sky on an engine of blood which is why they were so crazy about
sacrifice like those aren't Legends they actually did that a lot so we figured it
would really pipe into what was cool about the Aztec to have the blood
actually be a part of the game so the way it works is that in the game you're
spilling blood constantly because of the fighting you can absorb it and and based
on different factors it'll do different things for you always advantageous but
it's just a way to to make something that's always there actually be useful
yeah right and that ties into the combo points and amount of hits you can get in
what way uh it depends sometimes it'll give you health back sometimes it'll
extend your your combo meter we we're thinking at this point and it's not
finalized yet but we're thinking at this point we want to give you a choice what do you want the blood to do so that's
great and like uh with the combo stuff wow sorry I just had to point out that
was an insane amount of blood that just flew through the screen um certain like
every once in a while you hear an eagle sound and the guy jumps up is that just the jump or is that something else going
on there we're trying to give every single enemy attack a distinct tell and
that means a very specific Visual and a very specific piece of audio so when
you're hearing that eagle scream that basically means that it's a specific
attack that's about to happen and so it kind of gives you mentally prepared for
what's happening in the next second yeah right and the whole mental preparedness
this is not a game that's based around button mashing if you notice when he
just whiffed right there a whiff is when you miss a person so you're trying to
grow up your combo you're trying to get all those extra points you whiff you
lose your combo so it's more about strategy listening to the key points
like you were just talking about and making sure that you land all those hits
because that is how you can get more blood and more points um one other thing
that I had to touch on is the art style because the second you walk past this
booth you notice it's very unique what can you tell me about that so the reason
we have an art style that looks like this is because a I thought it would be
a cool challenge I've never really done anything like this before and I'm the
only artist on the project so the other reason something like this makes a lot
of sense is because if we had a very very complex art style it would be
difficult to create a lot of assets so we had to do something that would make
us stand out and that also made sense from a production point of view and
that's kind kind of why we ended up here um the only other reason is that it sort
of makes sense and kind of looks as techy at the end of the day so it's just
it's it's what ended up making the most sense for us yeah it looks fantastic and
you're definitely right it does look as sucky but there must have been some amount of challenges in running this as
well because making things pop out must have been interesting was was that
difficult oh yeah I mean it took a long time to get it to the point to where it was both interesting and not difficult
to look at so I mean people compare it to Mad World a lot which I totally
understand but the thing about mad world is that there's no gray and it's
actually very very difficult on a lot of people's eyes so I was trying to get as
far away from something like that as possible because obviously I don't want to create any physical pain in anyone
playing my game but it did take a while to get it to the sweet spot so it's a
really good point about the gray because when you look at this game it's not it's
sharp contrast but it's not sharp because it's still comfortable and
smooth to look at and it's really cool that you were able to capture that yeah for sure I mean the the trick is really
that the characters and the effects are black the foreground is like a dark gray
and then it just slowly creates this fake sense of depth by just lightening
the gray so it is it is ultimately so very simple but it's helping create the
distinction in the layers for the eyeballs so yeah that's really cool and
one thing that they also added in is that you can play this on Oculus Rift
luckily in unity it's not really that hard to add Rift support so they added
that and honestly if I was to play this game I'd love to pick up on Oculus Rift
so I'm super happy that you guys implemented that they've slightly changed the angle so that it makes a lot
more sense what can you tell me about that so the only thing that we really did is that we brought the camera a
little bit lower and a little bit closer into the characters so what that means
is that um you've got to actually look to the left in the right to see what's
happening around you and it's just very compelling something about it made it
much more engaging it made it much more interesting but since you have to look
around it also makes the environment much more alive and so that was the only
change we made in 5 minutes we're like let's try this and ended up being
awesome so we're sticking with it but yeah I mean like I said it's Unity it's
an easy implementation so you'll be able to play on the rift when the game is out
yeah that's great to hear a recurring theme I find with this game is that you
guys made something that seems simple a change that seems simple that made all
the difference and will make in my opinion will make this game which is
really great to hear I appreciate thank you for running us through the booth yeah thank you um if you'd like to see
all of our content in the Indie Mega Booth if you'd like to see all of our content at PS be sure to subscribe to
lus Tech tips