We’ve been preparing Steambirds Alliance for GDC! It’s the biggest game developer meetup in the world, and it’s a great time to get some press, have some meetings, show some demos to cool people, you know. This is the largest and most ambitious project Spry Fox has ever done, and we’re working as much as we can to make sure it’s received well!
We’ve been doing a ton of polish to the game lately, because we can. It’s really made a huge difference, bigger than I think we expected. Here’s a rundown of some of what’s been going on.
We got a new logo! We wanted to update it to include more of what the game has turned into. Here it is in its natural habitat: a splash screen.
The units in the early areas of the game have been treated to new 3D art. We think the new models are kind of a bit scarier. Maybe we’ll get used to them.
The bomb dungeon has gotten a complete makeover and is now 100% 3D. There’s just a ton of little touches in it now. Still super fun to set off all the explosions.
The Rebel City is fully 3D now, and has a new steampunk aesthetic. See those lamps glow, and the flicker of the storage building’s lights.
Some areas now have ambient particles filling the air. The Frozen Owl Monastary feels much chillier thanks to the snow that’s falling. Developed during, and based on, the real life snowstorm that hit Seattle this month.
Sometimes the snow gets hairy and slows you down…
Speaking of environmental hazards, we’re experimenting with those a bunch now. Check out these lava pillars in the Reeducation Camp… at random, they’ll rise up out of the ground, and you better hustle to get out of the way! That’s what you get for assaulting a tectonically active base.
We had this idea for improving the mission complete UI, and we just had to run with it because how cool is that?
We’ve created a new player class, the Paladin! It wields the Sword class of weapon, which is very damaging but consumes Steam prodigiously. Also, the Paladin has a Heal Aura, which slowly heals an area around it. Though some viewers have already speculated that it’s OP… yeah, it’s probably OP right now, and we’ll have to tune it somehow once we see how it is in action. It’s borrowing the Duster art until we find the time to make it some new duds.
Several bosses have gotten a major visual upgrade as well. Gargantua is looking positively, grandly ape-like!
…and this smog-belching jerk. Just begging to get cleaned up by a solid group of rebels.
Well, that turned into a good excuse to post a lot of braggy screenshots. We’re excited and proud of the work we’ve been doing and hope you all like it. 🙂 Yay, GDC!