Dark Machine Games

Happy 2020!

These past few holiday weeks have been rather nice; I just moved into a new apartment and out of the room I was renting, got some time off from work, and have had the opportunity to de-stress and work on the things I want to work on. Now that I’m getting settled in, it’s time to turn back to the ol’ grinding stone of War is Shell, to get more progress done in the backlog, and getting stuff ready to show. So, I have a few juicy teaser gifs to show today, with some big ones coming next time. Enjoy!

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While you’re off using high powered crab-guns against the world, the world is going to throw everything else it has at you too.

-oh my god it’s an ordinary crab-

-oh my god it’s a warrior crab, wait, oh n-

One of the things that I’m most excited about with this game is how random elements can really shake up a match. If you’re playing in any of the player vs player modes, aliens may invade the match halfway through, a god may rise from a volcanic eruption, and the King Crab may wage war on the island with his army of crab knights, squires, and bards. This will change the dynamic of a match, as no longer are you only fighting other players, but you may even need to temporarily side with them to win!

But this dynamic only works if there is variety, and so that variety has been a huge focus for me over the course of the development of WiS. Starting next devblog I’ll be teasing individual enemies or factions, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

And, of course, this all ties into the PvE Escape mode, where you and your friends must fight and escape increasingly difficult forces of enemies as you hop from island to island, gaining more powerful weapons and abilities while collecting what you need to win the run- but more on that next time!

So I figured I would use this opportunity to answer some questions that are often asked about the game. I’m happy to see people are excited about these cute little crustaceans, as I am excited too!

Q: Is the game purely multiplayer? A: No! While the game is built around it’s multiplayer experiences, a big focus of my development has been into making it fun to play offline, as a solo experience. The PVE mode has been created with that in mind, and there will be plenty of enjoyment to be had playing it without needing other players, or an internet connection.

Q: When will the game be released? A: When it’s ready! There is not set release date yet, so keep an eye out, when things are more set in stone, this blog, the Reddit, or my Twitter (@Futilrevenge) will be the first to let you all know!

Q: What will the price of the game be upon release? A: It’s hard to say this early on, though in my mind it’s around the $10-15 mark. That may change around release, but I want to keep the game affordable.

Q: Will Beta Access be available? A: It’s hard to say at the moment. I have been testing the game with many of those I know in real life, but the move to doing that online is daunting. It won’t be soon, as I want the first somewhat public facing release to be as polished as possible. If there will be some sort of private beta, I’ll announce it here and give people the chance to get into it.

Q: Why is it taking so long? A: I have a job that pays the bills! I would love to work on this full time, believe me, but at the moment financially I can’t afford to do so. But don’t worry! It will come when it’s ready!

Q: Is War is Shell coming to Consoles? Switch? A: I really want it to! I think the game would be super rad on the switch, and would love to get it there, but first I need to take it further before putting that commitment in. If it all works out, than I can guarantee that I will try everything I can to bring it to console.

Q: What Engine is the game using? A: The game is being developed within Unity.

Q: How performance intensive is this game? A: One of my metrics for this game’s performance is if it runs on my crappy potato laptop. It does! So, uh, I can guarantee that at least. I haven’t run it on a system that’s struggled... Yet.

If you have any more questions, reply to this thread where it is posted, or to the thread itself! I want to answer questions during each blog post.

But before I let you all go, here’s a short message from Jack, the man who is creating War is Shell’s whole audio experience.

Jack:  "Hey everyone, I'm Jack (@Diplodocus03). I've been doing the music and sound for the game. I've mostly been holding off on posting stuff relating to that because a lot of it isn't final yet! Having said that, I'm planning on making small segments that are aaaaalllll about making those things final. Everything from crab noises to rockets. Music-wise, that's a slightly different story. I spent years being pretty okay with just uploading chunks of unfinished tracks but even in the last couple months I've made huge changes to what will be in the game. I'm still super into being open about the creative process of so after the game comes out I'll share some demos and talk a bit more about that end. 

 Lastly, I want to cover the topic of voice actors for this game. Right now we don't need additional voices. I've filled in the gaps we've had just because I can record everything at home and process them quick and easy. That being said I'm definitely interested in bringing in more VAs if needed. If the game does particularly well, I'd really like to get support for other languages in the game (fingers crossed). That's it from me, see you around! " 

Hey there! If you’re here, it’s probably because you’ve been following the game on some of my other social media platforms (AKA: @futilrevenge on twitter or reddit.com/r/warisshell), but if not, let me give you a primer! 

War is Shell is a hermit crab PVP/PVE game where you play as cute hermit crabs doing hermit crab things. Here’s a gif of an ordinary day in the life of a crab:

And, er there are aliens invading. I guess.

And your shells are guns. That’s normal hermit crab stuff, right?

So whats the deal with these crabs?

Development of this game started around a year and a half ago. Since then it’s been a long road, but I’m really excited about these dang ol’ crabs and I just want to get them out there!

Even though it’s been in the oven for that long It’s still super early in development! I have a day job, and while I just took a new position that should be lighter on the hours this game still has a long way to go. But in the interest of transparency, and to kick my ass into high gear, I’ll be working to get these devblogs out every other Tuesday.

Just tell me about the crabs

Sorry to tangent there, here’s the deal with this game:

War is Shell is a Crab on Crab battle and survival game, where sessions are short and sweet, filled with action and ending before they become a slog. It’s visuals are primarily inspired by PS1 era games with vertex jitter and chunky polygons, with some fancy shader tricks thrown in to spice things up.

You play as an adorable hermit crab on various procedural islands using your claws, guns, rockets, saw-blades, laser beams, occult books, and magic wands to chop and blast your way to the top. Each session is unique, with different threats and mutators being combined to ensure that you are always on your feet. A Deathmatch might be interrupted by the lord of the sea rising, aliens may invade, your dead opponents may rise from their graves.

Maybe you need to team up for a moment to stop this boss from winning the match (And taking the win from any player!), before fighting over the spoils.

Or, maybe, you’ll team up with your friends to survive an onslaught, collecting components for your rocket to blast you all to the next island, where you’ll fight off even harder and harder monsters. How long can you survive, and what powers will you gain?

The game is split into two distinct modes of play:

PVP - War is Shell’s PVP modes consist of a number of gameplay variants, many of which are staples from the genre, while introducing some new others

Team Deathmatch & Deathmatch

King of The Cache

Rising Tide

Shiniest Shell

Longevity of these modes and the online community in general is a big sticking point in my mind. To supplement them, the game is built from the ground up with bot support and custom servers in mind (With server side modding planned)

If you want to host a server between you and your friends with some dumb bots to act as cannon fodder, or, you want to supplement your larger server with nasty machines that will act as a challenge for even experienced players, you will be able to!

Not to mention - the mutators, environmental hazards, map types, and more. I’ll be making a PVP specific post in the future, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

PVE - Co-operative play is my favorite aspect of online gaming, and over my years I have found myself drawn to these sorts of games more and more. Taking heavy inspiration from games such as Left 4 Dead and Risk of Rain, I really want the PVE aspects to shine. I’m going to make PVE it’s own post as well, so have your shells at the ready for that!

More info to come! Follow me here, on Twitter @Futilrevenge, or check out the Reddit: /r/WarIsShell

Any questions? Comment on this post and I’ll try to hit as many as I can in the next post. See you in two weeks!