Greetings IndieDB Community!
Following our dreams is not always an easy task but if we are persistent enough and work for it, we can make and create wonderful things.
Here at Mechanical Box Interactive, we believe in the potential of pursuing new ideas and fulfilling our dreams one step at a time, which is why we'll be showcasing during the course of the following weeks the evolution of our first title prototype, which is currently under one of it's developmental stages, marching closer towards the first beta version :) After months of work we finally can begin to show how our game is taking shape, so we will present you with sketches, concepts and screenshots of how our prototype is faring, while we follow our goal.
Without further delay, we would like to introduce you to the world of Khromagick! here, have a read of the first plot summary.
"In a planet torn by a cataclysmic phenomenon of ages past and a never-ending struggle waged between brotherhoods, you take the role of a spiritual wayfarer akin to nature, as your path becomes entwined with the fate of the world by a mysterious curse which extinguishes life on whoever carries its bewildering mark.Accursed and forsaken, you'll begin a journey to save yourself, as this world divided between light and shade depends upon your own fate; what outcome will follow, that's for you to find out... in Khromagick: The Dusk of Lumina."
Character Design Concepts
We've certainly had rich and interesting designs in the inkwell, which we will show later on, but as we tried to balance character with simplicity it needed to be readable, and to maintain unity with the world we are designing while retaining clarity and appeal to fulfill it's role as main.
Also we have been drawing inspiration from several sources, most notably the native and south american aboriginal cultures, but we didn't want to shamelessly copy them, and we will be showing those designs in due time ;)
Now this is our main character. We were looking for appealing and indentifiable features for it's design, in this first picture he's a bit stylized, but he's got most of the features we wanted to include upon him such as the mask and the cape which hid part of his body for story reasons.
As we continued to shape him up, we decided that to stay true to the universe, the cape should be something more like a "poncho", story-wise we had to show his other arm, which has been afflicted by a mysterious curse. He also gained some volume so he won't get pushed around by evil monsters.
What you're seeing below are some sketches that have allowed us to close in our protagonist final design for it's male and female version.
Now this is pretty much the final design for our male protagonist... We added hair to give some visual contrast to his silhouette and stay aligned with our ideals of clarity and simplicity plus giving a wink to the aboriginal cultures (mohawk anyone?).
This is our female version of the main character, she will do everything the same (or perhaps more) as her male counterpart, that way guys and girls can enjoy the game without worries for gender equality in the game industry :).
Her design is almost final, but that hair...we've had a lot of trouble with it since we wanted again to hint the native american cultures, but as we tried this complex hairdo, its translation to low-poly 3D wasn't that gorgeous.
Environment Concepts
Now following closely with our character design, we also began creating environment concepts having a more cinematic idea about them, like this Underground Natural Well or "Cenote" in Spanish (or if you like in the original Mayan language Dzonot), which for the moment, will be the starting point of our adventure.
Nevertheless there was too much information, we wanted a simple read so we began to exchange the idea of texture for more volume while defining the graphic style of the game.
This lead us to this Tundra-like environment, a possible environment to be found in the game later on.
That's it for this week, thank you for reading our first development update!
If you like what you see, consider tracking our game at Khromagick's IndieDB Site
For more info on our recent projects and our team, take a look at our Website
Or consider following us on our Official Facebook Fan Page too!
Tune you later, cheers!
J. Moreno
Co-Founder & Animation Director @ Mechanical Box Interactive
