Aztez by Team Colorblind - White, Grey, Black, and Blood - PAX 2013
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,659 words · ~8 min read
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lineus Tech tips coverage of pxs 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital Intel
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and steel series hey guys we're here at the Indie Mega Booth checking out as tez
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I had to check this game out not only because the art style looks amazing but
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there's blood everywhere and that's just awesome so what can you tell me about
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this game so ases is a it's actually two games it's a beat them up and also a
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strategy game so the idea is that you're going to go back and forth between the
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two going to have some fun real time beat them up segments and then kind of
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make some decisions and and think a little bit um the reason we did that
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it's just cuz we're tired of the standard beat them up formula and just want to see something new so for sure
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what can you tell me more about the the building mode or the the the nation
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controlling mode so you're basically going to be looking at a giant map of
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the Aztec empire shortly before the Spanish show up and the idea is that
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you're you're going to be pushing on the boundaries of the Empire trying to expand it but also managing chaos so
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when it happens you're going to enter one of the many City environments and
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and knock some heads around so you know it's kind of the way the Aztec did
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things Yeah so basically if someone messes with your Turf you go knock them
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out which sounds pretty cool yeah exactly now one thing is when you go to
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knock these guys out you can control different characters can you tell me more about that you're actually
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controlling a like a Special Forces Unit almost so this is just like a very very
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powerful get in there make a mess send the message get out um but when it's all
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said and done you'll be able to look however you want you'll be able to use
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one of four different weapons we want it to be very expressive and feel like it's
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it's you know you're making a ision and it's a reflection of you but but it is
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just a uh a non-descript special forces Warrior so that's cool that's cool I
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noticed again you said making a mess uh
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as I mentioned earlier there's blood everywhere what can you tell me about the blood mechanic so the reason there's
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a blood mechanic because the Aztecs were very very big on blood it was actually
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part of their religious belief system um they believed that the sun was moving
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through the sky on an engine of blood which is why they were so crazy about
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sacrifice like those aren't Legends they actually did that a lot so we figured it
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would really pipe into what was cool about the Aztec to have the blood
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actually be a part of the game so the way it works is that in the game you're
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spilling blood constantly because of the fighting you can absorb it and and based
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on different factors it'll do different things for you always advantageous but
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it's just a way to to make something that's always there actually be useful
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yeah right and that ties into the combo points and amount of hits you can get in
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what way uh it depends sometimes it'll give you health back sometimes it'll
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extend your your combo meter we we're thinking at this point and it's not
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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
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great and like uh with the combo stuff wow sorry I just had to point out that
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was an insane amount of blood that just flew through the screen um certain like
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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
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on there we're trying to give every single enemy attack a distinct tell and
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that means a very specific Visual and a very specific piece of audio so when
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you're hearing that eagle scream that basically means that it's a specific
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attack that's about to happen and so it kind of gives you mentally prepared for
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what's happening in the next second yeah right and the whole mental preparedness
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this is not a game that's based around button mashing if you notice when he
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just whiffed right there a whiff is when you miss a person so you're trying to
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grow up your combo you're trying to get all those extra points you whiff you
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lose your combo so it's more about strategy listening to the key points
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like you were just talking about and making sure that you land all those hits
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because that is how you can get more blood and more points um one other thing
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that I had to touch on is the art style because the second you walk past this
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booth you notice it's very unique what can you tell me about that so the reason
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we have an art style that looks like this is because a I thought it would be
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a cool challenge I've never really done anything like this before and I'm the
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only artist on the project so the other reason something like this makes a lot
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of sense is because if we had a very very complex art style it would be
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difficult to create a lot of assets so we had to do something that would make
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us stand out and that also made sense from a production point of view and
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that's kind kind of why we ended up here um the only other reason is that it sort
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of makes sense and kind of looks as techy at the end of the day so it's just
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it's it's what ended up making the most sense for us yeah it looks fantastic and
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you're definitely right it does look as sucky but there must have been some amount of challenges in running this as
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well because making things pop out must have been interesting was was that
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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
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to look at so I mean people compare it to Mad World a lot which I totally
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understand but the thing about mad world is that there's no gray and it's
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actually very very difficult on a lot of people's eyes so I was trying to get as
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far away from something like that as possible because obviously I don't want to create any physical pain in anyone
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playing my game but it did take a while to get it to the sweet spot so it's a
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really good point about the gray because when you look at this game it's not it's
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sharp contrast but it's not sharp because it's still comfortable and
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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
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that the characters and the effects are black the foreground is like a dark gray
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and then it just slowly creates this fake sense of depth by just lightening
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the gray so it is it is ultimately so very simple but it's helping create the
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distinction in the layers for the eyeballs so yeah that's really cool and
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one thing that they also added in is that you can play this on Oculus Rift
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luckily in unity it's not really that hard to add Rift support so they added
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that and honestly if I was to play this game I'd love to pick up on Oculus Rift
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so I'm super happy that you guys implemented that they've slightly changed the angle so that it makes a lot
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more sense what can you tell me about that so the only thing that we really did is that we brought the camera a
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little bit lower and a little bit closer into the characters so what that means
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is that um you've got to actually look to the left in the right to see what's
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happening around you and it's just very compelling something about it made it
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much more engaging it made it much more interesting but since you have to look
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around it also makes the environment much more alive and so that was the only
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change we made in 5 minutes we're like let's try this and ended up being
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awesome so we're sticking with it but yeah I mean like I said it's Unity it's
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an easy implementation so you'll be able to play on the rift when the game is out
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yeah that's great to hear a recurring theme I find with this game is that you
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guys made something that seems simple a change that seems simple that made all
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the difference and will make in my opinion will make this game which is
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really great to hear I appreciate thank you for running us through the booth yeah thank you um if you'd like to see
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