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Lost Hope [2D Survival Horror Game]

SomberPixel · 2017-01-14T17:41:21

Lost Hope Hello there, we are Somber Pixel! We are developing a pixel art survival horror game called Lost Hope. Lost Hope is a survival horror game were you can freely explore a whole city and make decisions as you try to survive a mutant catastrophe. We take a lot from Resident Evil(1,2 and 3) and the Silent Hill franchise. About the game OverviewWhat would you do if suddenly people are turning into violent mutants? Spending your days at home waiting for everything to get solved was an option but you have already done that for a long time and are now out of supplies.What happens next is up to you : your objective is to escape from the city and (if you are curious enough) discover what actually happened.Of course, we are working on great personalities for each npc you will encounter, the reason why we don't talk much about the story right now is because you will be able to tackle the game in many different ways but your main objective remains: survive and escape from the city.Release dateHoping for a late 2015 release!We aim to release it on Windows, Mac and Linux. Features Fun and fluid combat system This does not mean it is easy though! We want you to feel the horror of having a mutant in front of you. So if you want to play Rambo on this one...you will end up torn into pieces by a mutant because bullets are scarce. There is melee combat too! Everything in order to survive. *The following image is a work in progress just to give you an idea, all the streets will be highly detailed in the final version. Exploration and decisions Explore a whole city full of rich and detailed environments from the very beginning at your own risk. You can explore the inside of every single building.Look for people full of personality, make then favors ... kill them!? wait,what? Wouldn't that destroy the game plot and make it generic? Nope, that is part of the game, in real life you would try all sort of things in order to survive a mutant catastrophe, but everything has a consequence in your ordeal,right? Deadly enemies that will make you feel blessed for living a normal life without them Every mutant is designed with a combat strategy in mind that goes with their design, oh and they all want to kill you. Sometimes,it is better to avoid them and find an alternate route. Lots of items to collect Which,again, does not break the game. We want it to be hard but enjoyable. And more There are more aspects of the game that we would like to share on this post but need to be refined. We will be posting our progress regularly! And about the audio... we will have in covered in the future!It is an important part in a game like this. Meet the team We are just 2 guys in Somber Pixel but we put all our effort and time in this game! Left: Adolfo Jungbluth(Programmer) Right: Arturo Anci(Pixel artist) The most important part...your feedback! We would appreciate every single advice so that Lost Hope becomes the game you want. A little late now that the holidays are over but: we wish this 2015 to be full of joy for everyone! Even though this Santa yells a Christmas message. Contact us Twitter: Somber Pixel: @SomberPixel Adolfo:@adolfojo777 Arturo @Artan0728 Tumblr: http://somberpixel.tumblr.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomberPixel Or directly here!

Indie Showcase Community

Started by SomberPixel January 03, 2015 06:03 PM

17 comments, last by SomberPixel 7 years, 8 months ago

SomberPixel

Author

213

August 15, 2015 09:19 PM

Update 7: Combat Animations!

There is a lot of action involved in Lost Hope. With lots of mutants lurking around the city you cannot have some static animations for such a rigorous combat. That is why, in order to achieve a fluid combat system, we are investing a lot of time making fluid animations.

Combat is very important so we want to make it fun and challenging, it is still being programmed and not all the animations are completed but we want to show you a first look at what will be the combat system for Lost Hope.

Aim and shoot!

*Work in progress*

Mutant catastrophe means you have to search and equip weapons that may help you to survive.

The basic ranged weapon is a gun.

If you are using keyboard and mouse input for the game, you can aim while pressing the right mouse button. You can control the angle with the mouse, moving the mouse up or down or to the sides will control the angle so keep that in mind when trying to kill mutants!

Bat attack, again!

Just a reminder of what the melee combat will be about, there will be other kind of weapons. In this case we show the bat attack which is pretty useful in case you want to save some ammo.

Right now the main character is just attacking the air, but that is because the combat system is still being programmed. We will soon show how this attack can be a powerful ally when fighting mutants.

Evade... you will need it!

An important aspect of the game is to evade in order to survive. If a mighty attack is about to hit you, you can evade it while maintaining your direction and then strike back with a melee attack. You can have a first look at the evade animation.

That is not all

We have just showed what we have done so far for the combat system, but there are still many things we need to do, such as enemy behaviors and more actions of the player that will make of the combat a fun and challenging experience.

As always, feel free to comment and give us some feedback! Remember this is work in progress and may change for the better.

More aspects of the game will also be revealed soon

SomberPixel

Author

213

August 15, 2015 09:24 PM

Update 8: We are back!

Somber Pixel is back! And with it, Lost Hope development will be a lot better. We made some changes in our management and control process and now have much more time to develop Lost Hope than before. The team is still formed by both Arturo and I (Adolfo) , but now we have managed to find a incredibly suitable workflow for Lost Hope.

As you may already know, Lost Hope is a survival-horror game with both exploration and action involved to keep things fresh. You will take the role of a man who is living in a city surrounded by terrible mutants due to a catastrophe and you will be able to freely(but at your own risk) explore the city in search for survivors, items and information.Story is an important part of this game and we are giving the players the option to decide their actions and change how the story develops.Also, each NPC will have a unique personality and you will be able to talk to them ,do some favors for them(or not), attack them and more. In other words, we are aiming for a rich world were you really feel the need of survival and interaction with the characters.

We were inspired by other games in the genre such as Silent Hill, Lone Survivor, Resident evil(1,2 and 3) and other games we consider scary and fun.

Our last update was a while ago but do not think we were lazy this last months! Most of our advances have been code and game-design-related and not much about visual or gameplay implementation( which is what we usually write articles about). A lot of things have been coded, such as our own custom input manager, an enhanced event system, data-related things, micro-systems that allow flexible code and more. Technical aspects will not be covered in this article though!

Main character's enhanced movement

As you may have read in other articles, in Lost Hope we put a lot of attention in details. We want this experience to be unique and immersive so details are as important as the main mechanics. Look at the before and now animations of the main character's basic movements.

Walk direction change

Before

Now

Run stop

Before

Now

Run direction change

Before

Now

Even though it is not a massive difference, we want this to be a detailed experience.

Thanks for your time, both of us are pretty passionate about this game and we will work harder everyday in order to release a significant experience for the players.

We plan to keep you updated much more often now and you can always find us on twitter or the links we have provided. Stay tuned for more updates(There will be a lot more of these!).

SomberPixel

Author

213

August 22, 2015 04:47 PM

Update 9: Stealth mode preview

Last time, we talked about our return after 3 months unable to post updates. As we promised, we will now post updates more often so here is one for you! On this update we show you a preview of a simple, yet interesting mechanic we are preparing ... Stealth mode!

How much noise you make plays an important part in Lost Hope. Some mutants may detect you if you are just running around the place or shooting. This is where stealth mode comes to play.

First of all, let's be clear about the name of this mechanic. Lost Hope is not a stealth game but we did not find another name to call this mechanic! Stealth mode consists on reducing how much noise you make by adopting a special position. It can be triggered at any time and its main purpose is to avoid being detected by mutants. We decided to embrace this mechanic since this is a survival horror game and sometimes the best strategy is to just avoid dangers. This might save you some bullets and health problems.

*Work in progress

In stealth mode you will be able to move while reducing the odds of being detected by a mutant. If used correctly, stealth mode can save your life and some precious combat items.

This will also help you to pass through some places which are impossible to pass while standing.

Keep in mind that now each time you change direction, there is an animation to keep things smooth.

That is all for this update. As you can see, this is a simple mechanic since we don't want to lose the immersion of the game but really helps you to avoid some encounters.

As always, your feedback and suggestions are appreciated. We are still thinking of other way we can make the most out of this simple feature without loosing the immersion that this genre needs. Stay in tune! Until next update.

SomberPixel

Author

213

August 28, 2015 10:49 PM

Update 10: NPC design preview

Character design is one of the most important parts in Lost Hope's development. Even though the last months we have published articles about gameplay and features of the game, we have been designing the story, the characters and how they will interact with you and between them.

This article covers the non playable characters' design. We will show some NPC we have designed but will not talk about their role in the story and the relationship they have with you. We will leave that for later.

The strong and proud woman

A woman who will not let herself be devoured by a mutant so easily. She is strong and her desire to survive is unique. Compared the other survivors, she gets things done even risking her life in some cases. She is proud and would not accept help so easily.

The confused little girl

A little girl whose parents are nowhere to be found. She is still wondering where might they be and, no matter what happens, she will not separate from her best friend teddie bear.

The boy who thinks of himself an adult

A young boy, barely entering his teenage years. Both of his parents are alive but are way too naive. He wants to protect his family but his parents tell him that he should let that to the adults. Most of the times, he acts as if he was older and does not measure the dangers ahead.

The big guy

Do not let yourself be fooled by his appeareance, thisbig guy is actually a really good person. He wants to keep the survivors together to raise their chances to survive. He is always putting everyone before him and will not hesitate to help anyone who is in danger. He worries about what the people lack to survive and would find a solution to problems.

There are way more npc, everyone with a different personality. We want each npc to be unique based on a personality. There will be other npc that will only care about their own survival and so on. We will post more about this in the future but this serves as an idea of our approach when designing characters.

As always, feel free to tell us what you think. Stay tuned for more updates!

SomberPixel

Author

213

August 28, 2015 10:55 PM

More updates coming soon ! (:

SomberPixel

Author

213

October 17, 2015 08:54 PM

Update 11: Equipping weapons and using strong attacks

On this update we will talk about equipment and how melee weapons work, introducing a new feature for the game : the strong attack.

First of all, we will talk about equipping weapons from the inventory window. For this, we wanted to make it simple so each item has a number of actions that can be triggered by pressing the positive button. For weapons, one possible action is Equip/Unequip. Pressing the "Equip" action will enable you to use that weapon depending of its category. There are two main categories for the weapons : melee and ranged.Melee weapons are equipped in the left square and the ranged weapons will take the right square. You can see it for yourself here!

We will not talk about the numbered slots right now nor the equipped ranged weapon.On this article we are focusing on the melee aspect of the game.

As you can see, we added a new section in the bottom-left part of the inventory!Its main purpose is for you to see your currently equipped items.

When equipping a melee weapon, you will have access to a combo and a strong attack.Strong attack deals more damage than a regular combo attack but takes more time to execute and will consume more stamina.

*On this GIFs, we have not added any kind of darkness to the weapons so that you can see them more clearly

The GIF above shows the strong attack with a wooden bat. Imagine how much that thing hurts!

In Lost Hope, we plan to have a plenty of weapons to keep things always fresh. You can see now a regular blunt combo with a fire axe that you can get in the game.

Of course, that hurts a lot more than a bat! But mutants in Lost Hope are known for being strong and vicious creatures, so you need more than that to get rid of them.

We are still implementing similar aspects such as the ranged combat. We will talk more about that in future updates.Keep in mind that everything so far is work in progress and we would really like to have your feedback. Lighting is also WIP, we don't have any definitive lighting so far but we are looking for something that really fits the game.

Stay tuned! We are progressing more and more in the development. Until next update!

SomberPixel

Author

213

October 22, 2015 12:50 AM

Marty McFly just visited Lost Hope! Will he survive? - Back to the future day !

SomberPixel

Author

213

February 07, 2016 01:11 AM

How good are you at surviving a mutant menace?

SomberPixel

Author

213

January 14, 2017 05:41 PM

Lost Hope special message: Healthy, alive and decisions

Lots of things have happened these last months that really benefited our projects.But first of all you may be asking why we have not published anything about Lost Hope in the last months.

The truth is, we have been working hard in Lost Hope this last months but we have not been able to post much about it as most of the progress is about internal systems and modeling solutions that help us make a better game. About the art, we plan to show more about the game in the future but we want to make clear that Lost Hope is alive and healthy.

Even though we are always making progress, we have to face a reality: We are making a game with lots of details and content. This means more pixel art and programming, which also means more time we have to invest working on this. We really want to deliver a meaningful experience in Lost Hope so we need that Somber Pixel stays alive while the game is being developed.

Us vs reality

Swinging our way through reality!

That is why, in order to achieve goals as Somber Pixel this year, we plan to release an all new videogame we have been developing to keep things fresh during our free time. It is important to mention that this will not have a negative impact in Lost Hope's development, on the contrary, it will help us to continue developing a great and detailed experience we want to share with you all. The mentioned videogame is also a detailed experience but has the benefit of high replay value and immersion without the need of so many assets like Lost Hope.

We introduce to you... Dungeons of Asfore!

We keep the visual style we love to draw

We are creating an all new page for Dungeons of Asfore in the next few days so you can check our updates! We are planning a swift development thanks to the experience we have acquired during the last years.

We are so advanced with Lost Hope development that we would never plan to abandon it. When you develop a game for so much time it becomes something special, we want to share our feelings and experiences with you all in Lost Hope so stay tuned!

Lost Hope will be back soon and better than ever! And we really hope to count with you all!

Sincerely,

Adolfo and Arturo (Somber Pixel Team)