The Indie Game Magazine January 2015 | Issue 45 | Page 12

GAME WATCH

DESIRE

I

LOST EMBER by Vinny Parisi

t’s a brand new year, and with it comes renewed vigor for dev
teams to get crackin’ on their indie games. The same can be
said of Mooneye Studios and their project codenamed Desire,
who have made some significant strides over the past month, so
this month we’re getting right down to business.

mentioned that “we chose a new style that is much more realistic and
dynamic, and really uses the power that the Unreal Engine can give
us. The forms and meshes are still stylized, but the materials have
a lot more detail.” As you can see from the updated screenshots,
the art style has definitely progressed dramatically in just the past
month alone. It will be interesting to see how both wildlife and the
Last month, the team had two goals in mind: Creating a well-polished
Temple awakening art adapt to the new style.
vertical slice of Desire that they could show off to the public, in the
form of a completed single-level demo, and deciding on a stylistic As mentioned, the original goal was to have the demo put together
aesthetic for the project to match the team’s vision.
in December, and completed for January. In terms of that production schedule, Graff gave me the following, more specific update:
The team hopes to have that vertical slice ready for later this
“Our goal for December is to have the level for the vertical slice up
month, but Programmer Tobias Graff admitted that things haven’t
and running and playable from start to end (in a prototype state)
been smooth sailing. “We had some difficulties in the programso that we can concentrate on polishing and bug fixing in January.
ming, especially in the locomotion, as quadruped locomotion is
We’re a little behind schedule for the reasons mentioned above,
quite a bit more complex than humanoid locomotion,” Graff said.
but as I said, I think (or hope) we’re on a good way.”
“The bending of the spine in curves and turns, and ground sliding
in general, were bigger problems as expected.” So what do you do
when the mechanics aren’t working well from the get go and time
is a factor? Graff explained that “we went with some provisional
mechanics for now because we’re running out of time for our vertical
slice (which we intend to submit to the newcomer section of the
German Video Game Awards, as I think I mentioned earlier), and
there is still a lot of other stuff to do. But I’d say we’re on a good
way towards our goal now.”
Amidst hammering out the programming and other technical aspects of putting together a working demo, the team was also at a
crossroads when it came to the artwork. Last month, we debuted
a first look at concept art for both the Wolf and a Temple during
the “awakening” process. Since then, Mooneye Studios decided as
a team that the previous ar