The lands of Orthodoxia
almost 7 years ago – Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 01:36:09 PM

The world of ‘Blasphemous’ is big, daunting and open for exploration, although it won’t be always welcoming! These are some of the areas you will be exploring (many more will come at a later stage).  

Frozen Mountains

The Abbey at the top of the mountains is where the nuns of the Perpetual Sanctuary of our Mistress with the Burnt Face reside. Many women want to wear the habit and complete this long and dangerous pilgrimage towards the top of the mountain. Many fail and die a terrible death, freeze or starve, or are lost forever in the subterranean mazes they venture into, believing they are designed by God to put their faith to the test.

The Cathedral

The ruined Cathedral is a huge labyrinthian place full of distorted corridors, protected by traps as it is considered by the Congregation to be a very sacred place and only those with pure faith can enter. It hides a lot of secret rooms full of forgotten relics, and the sounds of creatures echo within its old and ruined walls like a lugubrious requiem.

Cemetery of Churches

 When old churches were abandoned for not being pure enough, the ground slowly swallowed them up,they twisted and sunk, one by one. Now only ruins remain, each looking like a tombstone in the distance.

Church of the Great Thurible  

A huge thurible was suspended from the central dome, balanced there indefinitely. The Congregation kneeled under it, praying, believing that if anyone should rise up or stop praying, the thurible would crush them.

The church is so massive and enormous that it takes a considerable amount of time to cross from one end to the other. The interior is barely lit as most of its windows were covered or destroyed.

Only the handful of survivors say that the silence inside is complete, and a tiny breeze is the only sign upon to kneel down, to avoid getting smashed by the huge, silent, thurible.

Lake of Silent Pilgrims

There is a shallow lake with salt statues of pilgrims scattered as far as the eye can see. It is said that they were petrified as a punishment for their laziness, the weaker of the parade. Their bodies started turning into salt from the legs up to their heads in a profound agony and terror, something one can still tell from the pose they remain in today. Some of them say that if you get close enough, you can hear a lament of pain coming from the inside of each one of them.

Endless Pit

 A dark and enormous pit that takes forever to descend into. Down within it absolute darkness awaits. Nobody has ever survived the fall. 

The holy expeditions of monks in search for old relics never returned. Some of the cowardly monks decided to turn back in the last minute, claiming that they could see the silhouette of huge bishops made of stone. Their cowardice was immediately punished; they were thrown into the Abyss.

Deep Woods

It is the darkest and deepest forest in Orthodoxia. It is said that the sunlight never reaches through the leaves and branches of the enormous ancient trees. The Congregation thinks that this place is sacred and some of them enter to try atoning for the sins they think they have committed.

Since the Age of Corruption, the forest has been inhabited by lost creatures and desperate souls that wander around with no purpose. Through its sinuous paths, sorrowful laments can be heard in the distance.

Projects we Love

We are great fans of point-and-click adventures, and we've stumbled across StarFlint by Stunmason Games, and we believe it may be appealing to you. We'd love to see that project come through, so if you're interested in Sci-Fi comical adventure, definitely head out there and give them a hand!

Official Fan Art Contest
almost 7 years ago – Sun, Jun 18, 2017 at 06:01:10 AM

We are happy to announce that we are holding an official fanart contest, ending 20.00 GMT on Sunday 18 June.

Rules

Only submit artwork that you made yourself. If you've seen some cool fanart, please let the author know about this competition so they can submit it themselves.

Eligibility  

• Images submitted can be produced digitally or traditionally, using any combination of media (cosplay is allowed). 
• Please include your name in your file name, for example "Name_Title of Artwork.png" (where applicable). 
• Please do not include your name or signature on the artwork.
• You can include a link to your gallery/portfolio/website in the comments if you prefer, this will appear with your submission once the winners are announced.

Link to Artwork Specifications

• Hosts that don’t require a password are accepted such as Dropbox and Imgur.
• No password-protected or zipped files.
• Accepted formats are: JPG, PNG, GIF
• If the artwork has been made using traditional methods, please scan it instead of taking a photograph of it, if possible. 

For other file formats please enquire on the Discord Server: https://discord.gg/NQwS7zK

Judging

All names will be replaced by numbers before they go to the judges and will not be paired with names again until final judging is complete. Judging will be done by the art team at The Game Kitchen.

After the final judging, the winners will be announced along with a compilation of all entries and the top 10 winners will be contacted by email.

Awards

(note that awards are given regardless of your backing status)  

Places 5-10: a copy of the game.  

Place 3-4: get a shirt + game.  

Place 2: poster + game.  

Place 1: art book + game.  

Submission form: http://goo.gl/XHG150

Gameplay Influences
almost 7 years ago – Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 06:27:59 AM

The gameplay of ‘Blasphemous’ is rooted to the old days of arcades. Back in the day, each game was a triumph on its own: they managed to deliver tremendous amount of content within terribly limiting technical constraints. They were challenging to make for developers and even harder to beat for the players. Many of those games became the teachers for plenty of us who played them as kids, especially Enrique and Mauricio.

Among these games we remember and cherish, a couple may have influenced the inception of Blasphemous, in particular, memorable side-scroller platformers like Ghosts 'n Goblins (and its successor, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts), an unforgiving game where your life is at stake at every second.

 A couple of years later, a massive hit arrived at home systems. I’m talking about Castlevania, for the NES. It wasn’t the original version, but it was the one most of us played. That game blew our minds, being one of the first titles to master a perfect balance between exploration and combat platforming.

 With games becoming more and more abundant , it became increasingly harder for a game to resonate with us like those classics did. Every once in a while a game shines, and oh, boy! This one did! I’m talking about 'Dark Souls' from the acclaimed Souls franchise. This game in particular defied most conventions about how a game was expected to be and in doing so, it gave birth to a whole new kind of game design. ‘Blasphemous’ borrows a lot from the ‘Souls’ series, especially in terms of narrative and level design.

 Recently, indie developers have been paying more attention and love to 2D exploration & platforming genres and we’ve been able to enjoy some memorable moments from a few interesting games. We’ve been playing many of them, and probably each one has an effect on what ‘Blasphemous’ will ultimately end up being.

Disclaimer: All games mentioned are trademarks of their owners, and are not in related to, or indorse Blasphemous in any way.

How characters are created
almost 7 years ago – Fri, Jun 09, 2017 at 09:29:36 AM

We want to share with you some details on the character creation process.

The birth of a new enemy character normally start when a new gameplay mechanic opportunity is identified. When Enrique, Creative Director at The Game Kitchen comes up with an idea for a new game mechanic, a debate starts within the art team to decide the meaning and the looks that would fit both the gameplay requirements and the context of the game’s world. The outcome of this debate is a ‘concept definition’ of how this new character should be. 

After this a tight feedback loop between Enrique and Juan Miguel, our Concept Artist begins. Sometimes it takes only a few sketches to settle on the looks of a new character, but some has taken up to 80 variations and iterations to get the two of them happy about the looks of a particular character.

At this point, it is normally pretty clear not only how the character should look, but how it should behave in the game as well. That enables the programmers to begin implementing the new enemy character, using placeholder graphics (sometime they use the sprites of an existing enemy, other times they just use ‘equivalent’ sprites from some other game).

The next step for the art team is to nail the final pixel aesthetics of the character. They normally start with the standing pose, and then Raul or Andrey, our Pixel Artists and Animators get started with the pixelisation process. The sprites are tested on top of several real game scenes to see if they match the style, and still are easily distinguishable from the background. When the pose, style and color palette is settled, they move on to animation.

 At this point, Juan Miguel comes in again and performs quick drafts on the animation, simple black pencil traces over white backgrounds. When the animations are on point with the expressions we are looking for in the character, then all that is left is pixel by pixel, handcrafted animation dark magic from our sorcerers Raul and/or Andrey.

Enrique and our programmers then work together to implement the sprite animation in Unity using a cool Unity plugin called PowerSprite Animator to fine tune the sprite animations. With a little bit more of magic coming from our programmers, the placeholder graphics get replaced by the proper ones. 

Finally, all that is left is to fine tune the gameplay, AI, combat and other secondary elements until, hopefully, everything is as appealing as it possibly can get! 

Projects we love

Ash Of Gods: A turn-based RPG featuring a Rogue-like storytelling featuring risks that TRULY affect the gameplay and an extensive online PvP mode!

This game feature a very stylish, and impressive traditional animation sequences that will blow you mind, check it out!