Did I get money for my FPS prototype?

…and more questions about The Game Previously Briefly Known As Gravemind.

A beautiful 2024 to all of you. I can’t believe it’s already been 6 months since the last update!

After spending the first few weeks of 2024 applying for funding, I’m happy to report that ~~Gravemind (~~~~working title~~) BRUTALISK has received a starting grant from Creative Industries Fund NL!

With this grant, I’ve been able to take a 3 month break from my regular job to figure out what this game will actually become outside of “yeah, it’s like Half-Life x Dark Messiah x Bioshock with cults and Brutalism.” Because a good game is more than the genre or ‘-like’, it’s trying to imitate.

For the submission, I recorded a bunch of prototype footage of the work we’ve been doing over the past year. It’s outdated by now, but still a good snapshot of what the project looked like in January 2024.

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One Month of Game Dev

This prototyping phase of BRUTALISK is focused on two goals:

• Core Gameplay: Further developing the core gameplay loop, especially the combat.

• Playable Prototype: The BRUTALISK experience must be playable for internal and external playtesters.

March was spent implementing basic enemy AI, player health, UI feedback and actual combat. Level designer can now simply drag-n-drop in enemy NPCs in blockouts to test combat spaces!

There have been a lot more exciting additions to the project… weapon throwing!

This is something I’ve wanted to implement for years fidgeting whether guns should be treated as an unlockable to adhere to 90s era shooters’ standards, or as a disposable resource like in Call of Duty, Hotline Miami or Superhot.

(The footage speaks for itself. It was a hit on Twitter.)

One Step Forward, Two Feet Less

Gore is a funny in video games. Half-Life 1 featured it a lot through its gib system and it’s been a staple of 90s shooters as well. You’d imagine it to be a perfect feature for a Half-Life inspired game, right? Riiiiight?

«CONTENT WARNING: MILD GORE, DISMEMBERMENT»

The fun part about game development is that things don’t always work out the way you expect them to.

Expectation: gore is fun and satisfying and juicy and cool

Reality: gore makes ragdolls a lot less funny because your brain shuts off that you are looking at humans

I’m not sure I want to keep at this point – not because of age-ratings, but simply because ragdolls are way more satisfying and funny. In a game where one of the core pillars is ‘physics fun’, anything that reduces it to conform to ‘violent FPS’ standards just seems like a wrong move. Sometimes, less is more.

Embrace physical comedy.

I recorded a bunch of grunts using Audacity and my studio mic, and threw them into Unreal Engine after reading a Twitter comment. I wish I did this a lot sooner. Another step closer to my professional voice acting career.

Walk Without Rhythm

Jim got inspired by Dune 2’s brutalistic structures, so he whipped out a level blockout for potential art direction, following the theme of “religious dystopian church.” Music by our lovely edgy composer, Dan Victory.

The Future

In the coming months, I’ll be posting a lot more development footage of BRUTALISK as the gameplay prototype begins to take shape. For now, I’ll leave you with some more brutal techno-rocky combat tunes.

Take care, and thanks for reading!

-Keano