A new perspective for Legacy of the Copper Skies

A new perspective for Legacy of the Copper Skies

Among the tools in a game developer’s tool-kit, one of the most complex is feedback. It’s seductive to think that your first idea is your best idea, and hearing that some people prefer things another way can often be hard. Yet insightful feedback can help make games better, and as much as everyone would like to think they’re a genius, nobody gets everything right.

A screenshot of the original perspective of Legacy of the Copper Skies.

A screenshot of the original perspective of Legacy of the Copper Skies.

Up to this point everything we’ve shown for our first game Legacy of the Copper Skies, has been shown from our original design of the game which was going to be an isometric perspective. Our thoughts behind this were that this perspective helped to distinguish the game in an immediate visual way from the adventure games that had come before.

We are justifiably proud of our strong showing during this year’s Square Enix Collective’s feedback phase. Indie game fans seemed to find what we had planned for the game was something they wanted to play. Along with all the excitement and compliments were suggestions on how we could improve the game and one of the most frequent was a suggestion to change the game’s perspective to a more traditional top down one.

As we reviewed all the feedback we’d received from the voters and fans, a change in perspective seemed to make sense. Though we are certainly inspired by the great pixel-art adventure games that have come before us, there is so much new and different about Legacy of the Copper Skies that helps it stand out from what’s come before that we felt comfortable going with a traditional view.

The new top-down perspective for Legacy of the Copper Skies.

Exploring this new perspective lead us to see the advantages of the change on the development front chiefly that we can now iterate quicker and respond to feedback and changes in a more agile way. We’re also loving how great it looks now and we feel that it’s going to allow players to focus in on the story, control and gameplay elements that we’re bringing to the adventure game, rather than just a tilted perspective.

Another look at Legacy of the Copper Skies’ new perspective.

Once again we’re grateful to everyone who took the time to vote and give us feedback during the Square Enix Collective’s feedback phase. Feedback is a great tool and we’re thankful that it’s already making Legacy of the Copper Skies better.

May Progress Report

Hey, everyone!

Unfortunately we haven’t had an update for a while as we’ve been fairly busy and didn’t want to tease out too many updates before we were ready to come out with our stuff in a more public way. So here’s a bit of what we’ve been working on lately.

The big thing we’ve been working on is our prototype for combat, including all the animation, art, AI, FX, design, and code that goes along with that. We now have two playable characters with different attacks, and some functional enemies as well. Plus the AI is pretty good too.

Music is the other really big thing we’re excited about. We have a great musician currently working in secret (#Secrets!) on our theme song. We’ve heard a few early versions of it and, if they are any indication of the final product, it’s gonna sound wicked.

On top of all of this we’ve been polishing up our art, and in game we’re getting closer to the vision we see in our heads. On the tech (and potentially less exciting) side, we’ve finalized our pipeline for creating levels, which tends to be something that’s hard for designers to break (AKA me). Additionally, our freelance concept artist Jakob Eirich has made a poster image for us that we’ll be showing just as soon as our logo is complete.

We also have a new hire, Whinnie, from the University of Waterloo. She’s taken over marketing, community relations, and a few other things here at HUGS. Say hi if you have the chance!

The last bit of news to share is that we will soon be announcing our game in a fairly big way. That’s basically why we’ve been silent for so long, nose to the grindstone as it were. So stay tuned, it’ll be soon (we promise!)

As a bonus, here is a small teaser image for our upcoming reveal.

February Progress Report & Anticipation for GDC 2015

Well, we’ve made some great progress over the last little bit. We’re super happy with how things are going so far. We’ve had our hiccups, and had to deal with some issues, but overall it’s going really well.

Here’s some of the things we’ve been working on, and working through.

  • Finished first batch of concept art thanks to Jakob Eirich our concept art contractor
    • http://www.yakonusuke.com/
    • If you are looking for concept art we definitely recommend you hire him.
  • Established a good portion of our art direction and what camera style(s?) we’ll use
  • Working on our pixel art style / resolution
  • High level Design for the Game
  • Good pass on our games narrative
  • Beginning to figure out our tech art issues and pipelines (2D Dynamic Lights!)
  • Upgraded our Website
  • First official Press Inquiry!

Right now we’re still in the very early planning and concept phase so we don’t want to share much right now, but in the coming weeks we’ll start releasing screen shots, concept art, tech/animation videos, and generally more information about our game in the near future.

If you are curious about who we are, well, check out our newly updated Team page.

On a side note, we’re pretty pumped to go to GDC this year. We’ve been a few times already, but never had a chance to go see the IGF & Choice Awards Ceremony, so that’ll be fun for us. If you are interested in grabbing a drink hit us up! We’ll be there all week taking in the sessions, tutorials, games, and getting into whatever other shenanigans we can find.

So like us on Facebook and Twitter and we’ll keep you posted