Hello, I am Joshua Wise. Founder and CEO of Broken Hammer Games. I'm also the Lead Writer and overall Project Director. In this studio update we'll be revisiting our past to craft the future.
But for starters, lets talk about what happened at Broken Hammer during the month of February.
This last month was not as active as past months (well not as hectic), as we've completed most of our production work on the first day of the Neutral Arc back in January. However, work on the second day is well under way, and we have released our first demo to closed testing during the month of February.
So far feedback has been good. We're catching issues that have been missed and moving forward on that front.
As far as getting into the test group, we may be opening it up to more in the month of March. Which we will open to the Guns of Icarus community first.
March actually is ramping up to be a very busy month for our music team as they finalize the first parts of the soundtrack for the demo. We held a company meeting in February and made a lot of progress towards this.
This all is important as we move towards launching our crowdfunding campaign. Which is getting so close we can taste it. We are very excited about this because it is a major milestone for us.
Those that have remained on the project since it's conception are even more excited because this is what many of them dreamed about years ago.
With that said, our art department reached a milestone of it's own this month. That is the creation of the scene for the first art that was ever made for the project:
The full color version will be seen in game. But you can see the changes in the character from her origin art to present day.
Aoli was originally going to have more of an Asian dress in her outfit. In fact, she isn't the only one whose character changed significantly from the original design.
But as her character became more clear to the team, it became obvious that her appearance at the Cathedral Conference would have her appearing in more of a military style outfit. That she would have a less feminine approach.
The scene in question is one that has been iconic with the team ever since it was written. Being Yeshan, she is from the big super power faction in GOIO. So one of the first impressions we wanted to show was getting a sense of her superiority. She's very much a one woman army, at least in her mind. So showing off her confidence was important.
This background key image for this scene was completed early last month and it really turned out better than I could have imagined.
Moving forward into the month of March is looking to be crunch time as we gear things up for that crowdfunding launch. Which we are currently aiming for either late March or April.
Oh and if you haven't already, check out Guns of Icarus Online! The PVE Alliance mode is right around the corner. You can spend $60 on games that don't deliver half the content GOIO does for it's small price. We've been playing For Honor in the office lately and while its just amazing to see the old conquest mode from Soul Caliber 2 Arcade coming back, for a fraction of that price, you can get the same mode and more in GOIO: Alliance. Plus you can do it flying airships!
But to each their own. For Honor is quite enjoyable in it's own ways, the same as GOIO.
So till next month, keep an eye on our Facebook and GOIO threads. We'll have more updates as we go and one of them may just be...our crowdfunding announcement!