Hello everyone!
Wellcome to the first devlog for our game, "Lúcio".
We are here to share with you the progress of our upcoming project. We are a few months in the production and a little bit late on the devlog follow-up, but stick with us to know about our project and what are our plans in the coming weeks.
"Lúcio: Despojos de Guerra" (eng: "Lúcio: Remnants of War") is a 2D narrative-driven, exploration game where players take on the role of a young Portuguese soldier forced to participate in a senseless war.
Story and Setting
The Portuguese Colonial War, also known as the Overseas War (Guerra do Ultramar) or in the former colonies War of Liberation (Guerra da Libertação), was a 13-year-long conflict fought between Portugal's Military and the emerging nationalist movements in Portugal's African colinies between 1961 and 1974.
Lúcio takes place in 1972 and is based on a true story lived by the grandfather of one of our studio members in this war. It follows the journey of a young soldier, Lúcio, being forced to participate in a senseless war and intends to demonstrate the consequences that war can have on people and its surroundings.
Throughout the game, you will explore the military camp, interact with other soldiers, and live through the perspective of those same soldiers in a time-appropriate experience.
Gameplay
In "Lúcio", players will explore the portuguese military camp, interact with other soldiers and collect items. Our core mechanic is the dialogue system as you will learn in first hand what was like being in this war and experience both yours and others soldiers tension. You will be able to search for items and do sidequests to gain some more, as well as special interactions if you try and look for everything across the camp.
Development Progress
At this point we've been working on "Lúcio" for roughly 6 months and we are at the end of the production process for this vertical slice. We're almost finished with the Art, having all characters, scenaries and big assets finnished up and are currently working on the animations, small assets, UI and "cutscene" images. We have all the narrative finished up and the game scructured designed, currently being at the middle of the implementation for the second half of the game in Unity. We'll update you in more detail throughout the next devlogs for all of this processes.
For all of this to be as historically accurate as possible, we've been constantly researching. We've had access to first-hand reports from Lúcio's wife about his stories and from many other ex-combatants that shared their own experiences with us, making it possible to know how the camps worked and how the soldiers lived their day-to-day. We've also seen many movies, documentaries and read lots of books with reports of the events that happened during the time as well as visual representarions of the time itself.
What can you expect?
This first release at the 9th of June 2023 will be relative to the first of three parts in this game. In this first vertical slice we intend to do the setup for the main event in the story and the one that traumatizes our character to only then approach the consequences of war and the scars it leaves on people.
For now, by the 9th of June, you'll see all of this first part setup and homage to Lúcio. After that, we intend to continue the game's narrative, trying to represent that in wars there are no victors and how it affects both the people and its surroundings.
That's all for today!
Thank you for reading and we hope you are as excited as we are. Keep up with us for more updates soon and be ready to immerse yourself in the story of this young soldier!
