Summer is here, and so is June's development update for Othercide! This time, we will introduce you to Yoann - UI/UX Artist on the project - and the work he did these last few weeks.


First, Yoann starts with a bit of game design by listing all the interactions we wish to have in the game for a feature, such as the Daughter creation menu we previously unveiled to the community. All the raw information needed on screen needs to be summarized to make the layout. It consists of choosing where each information will go on users’ screen by dealing with some basic rules such as the reading direction and hierarchy of information. Indeed, we want to show to the players the most important ones first.

He then tries to have all the information of the different in-game screens on paper. During this pre-production stage, he mostly takes inspiration from other UI/UX artists he likes as well as video games where standards have been defined in some genres. He also must make sure the user interface will respect Othercide’s art direction and style of menus we wish to have (minimalist, ethereal…).

When there is too much information to display on screen, Yoann has to think about menu navigation and how some windows can appear on the same screen. Sometimes, he puts the layout on Unity without spending too much time on graphics and animations. At this step, he doesn’t focus on how it will look at the end: it only consists of grey blocks and raw text to see where each information will go and interact with one another.

After defining all of this, the screen integrates itself in a global flow of various other screens. The flow must be defined by minimizing the number of interactions and by optimizing the number of clicks from players. However, it can be interesting to have a right balance between aesthetic and convenience.


It is now time for Yoann to prototype the global flow with Adobe XD. This tool allows him to visually define interactions and avoid spending too much time on programming. He makes a very simple version of the flow to create basic interactions and see if it is consistent. People in the studio can now try it and see if something is weird!

When the prototype is all good, Yoann works with Lightbulb Crew’s developers so the team can implement the navigation into the game. Once implemented, he can focus on the graphics and animation part of the user interface by using Illustrator, Photoshop and After Effects. He makes sure everything is consistent with Othercide’s art direction by showing it to Alexandre, Art Director on Othercide.

Here is the evolution of the Memories Timeline menu:















And this is the end of the first iteration! After this step, Yoann will make changes regarding Othercide community’s feedback to make sure the user interface is understandable and easy to use by most. Thank you all for the support and we see you very soon!

Hello guys! Since the community seemed to really like Othercide's music style in our latest trailer, we thought now was the time to present one of the artists we partnered with. We are very happy to announce our collaboration with Pierre Le Pape who worked with other artists on multiple songs for the game. Get to know them better through their experience while working on the project and listen to an exclusive sample of 'The Child's Song' we unveil today!


Pierre Le Pape is a French artist known for being the metal composer, vocals and keyboard from his own band Melted Space, collaborating with other artists from the French metal scene as well as international bands such as Slipknot, Morbid Angel and Dark Tranquility. Pierre also worked for numerous other bands such as Embryonic Cells, with whom he will play on stage at Hellfest 2019 held from June 21-23 in France.

Our duo from the Marketing team – Margaux (Head of Marketing & Communications) and Johanna (Social Media Manager) – will also attend the event. Make sure to stay tuned because we have something in mind!

The other artists who participated in the soundtrack ‘The Child’s Song’ were Spencer Sotelo from Periphery (Voice), Frederic Leclercq from Dragonforce and Sinsaenum (Guitar/Bass), Dirk Verbeuren from Megadeth and Soilwork (Drums), Anne-Lise Durantel (Violins) at CSD Studio, François-Maxime Boutault (Mix) assisted by Susie Lopez Uroz and Tony Lindgren (Mastering).

Listen to an exclusive 60-seconds sample of the soundtrack now and tell us what you think!


Pierre Le Pape (Music/Words/Orchestrations): “As a gamer and composer, I’m really glad and grateful to compose my very first video game soundtrack on such an ambitious and highly artistic project. These last months, I spent a lot of time in the dark Othercide’s universe and it’s been a fantastic experience to transcribe it in music and words.

I had the opportunity to work with great people and friends, I’m really proud of what we’ve done. I would like to thank all the people involved in this and, of course, Anders – CEO and co-founder of Lightbulb Crew – and Alex – Art Director on Othercide – for their support and incredible trust!”
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Frederic Leclercq (Guitars/Bass): “When Pierre approached me for this project I didn’t think twice: the music he wrote was great, and I love video games. THEN he told me that Dirk and Spencer were part of this, and it was like two cherries on top for the price of one (laughs).

We’ve met on tours/festivals before and they are really great at what they do – same goes to Pierre of course; so for me its an honor to be part of this and I’m ready for the sequel (laughs).”
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François-Maxime Boutault (Mix): “I was fortunate enough to be part of this incredible piece of music, gathering so many talents in just one soundtrack.

The mixing process has been very challenging because everyone involved did their best to offer a greater value on each performance, resulting in an unique sounding song with many tracks.

Even if I have been working with Pierre Le Pape many times in the past, and although I happened to meet many of the artists involved in this song, that was the first time – and a singular opportunity! – to work with all of them in one project. Definitely a great experience!”
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Tony Lindgren (Mastering): “Mastering this song was a lot of fun! All the guys performing did a great job, and that combined with the bombastic and catchy arrangement simply makes this an awesome song.

From the get go the mix sounded really good but we still went for something called stem mastering. This means that I received the mix split into a number of instrument groups which in turn let’s me make individual adjustments to the different elements of the mix during the mastering process. Setting everything up this way made it possible to do those in depth tweaks that brings out the power and detail of each sound and makes the end results sound great!”

We hope you liked the song and we see you in two weeks for the development article of June!

Hello guys! May is already over and it is time for us to update you about the development of Othercide. We decided to focus on special effects from the game that Simon, our FX artist, creates for various actions.


Some actions of the Daughters and enemies from the game have to be paired with gorgeous special effects. For each action, we ask Simon to make some FX and this process can be quite long.



First, he has to think about what it should look like. Through this conceptualization, he makes use of his knowledge to adapt it to each character, action and general mood of the game.

It is important to watch a lot of movies and play different video games to get inspiration. But it can also come from things that don't have any FX such as sculptures, and basically art in all its forms. For one of the special effects he made in May, he took inspiration from lightning-throwing ennemies that appear in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.



He then find a global shape for the FX that can be easily recognizable so each FX is different from one another. He also defines its colors, this step being surprisingly complicated even though the game is in black and white.

Each FX has to stand out from the level colors so he has to choose different tones and shades. As a quick note, black and white are used for enemies in the game while red and white are used for the Daughters.


As Simon said, there is no miracle recipe. In fact, he has to use and assemble many techniques to create FX such as drawing, 2D, 3D, programming, fluid simulation techniques, shader...

With Shuriken in Unity, he starts by creating shaders and defining how the effect and particles will behave. This tool allows him to make the global shape of the FX.

One FX can be made from different effects and particles. In here, we have the smoke, the white line on the floor, the particles ejected (sparks, water drops...) and more.



Finally, after the FX was validated by our Art Director Alexandre, Simon uses Timeline in Unity to decide when to trigger the effect for each character. Phew, it's done!

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That's it for today, we hope you liked these work in progress FX! June is going to be another busy month and we can't wait to share new updates with you again. Stay tuned!

As some of you already noticed, we have partnered up with Focus Home Interactive. And yes, it’s to publish Othercide!

This partnership will allow us to go further with the game now that we have an increased scope and budget for development to build the challenging and gruesome gaming experience we have always dreamed of! It also means that we won’t release Othercide this year – rather than going into Early Access, we will be fully developing the game and releasing some time during 2020.

“We are very excited to invite Focus Home Interactive to follow us on the dark and twisted journey that is Othercide! With their experience and knowledge of the video game industry, we will push the boundaries and break the rules of the tactical genre!”– Anders Larsson, CEO and Creative Director of Lightbulb Crew.

“We're delighted to join with the talented and passionate team at Lightbulb for the release of Othercide. It is a unique game with an incredible style and great gameplay. We cannot wait to see how our partnership can help the game meet its creative potential as we head into 2020. You're in for a treat!” – Dessil Basmadjian, Creative Director at Focus Home Interactive.

Thank you, folks, for the unbelievable love we received. Your support means a lot to us and this partnership with Focus won’t be changing how we talk to our community - we are looking forward to showing you more of Othercide in the coming months, so stay tuned!

Don’t forget to follow us on:
Facebook: facebook.com/othercide/
Twitter: twitter.com/OthercideGame
Instagram: instagram.com/othercidegame/

And wishlist our game on Steam! store.steampowered.com/app/798490/Othercide/

Cheers,

Lightbulb Crew

From March 18-22, we were in San Francisco to attend GDC and show Othercide to journalists from all around the world. No need to say it was an incredible experience!




We had the chance to pitch the game at Game Connection and GDC in front of an audience and compete against other great indie games (congrats to Flux Games for winning with Talaka!). Getting feedback from passionate players helps us see how to make Othercide the best game it can be.




But more importantly, we released a brand new trailer for the game, showing you the dynamic turn-based combat system set in a dark and corrupted dimension beyond our reality. You can see how our female warriors fight against nightmarish creatures to save humanity!

Overall, we had an opportunity to meet great people, talk to some amazing and insightful journalists and share our progress with them. We quote Andy Chalk of PC Gamer: “The game's red-slashed greyscale visual style is striking, but the combat is what it's all about. Unique character abilities and the "Initiative Sequence System" will enable players to interrupt incoming attacks, set up delayed actions that will occur later in the turn, and respond to enemy threats based on reaction skills.  “

We would also like to take a moment and reflect on the article by Spencer Legacy from MonsterVine who best described our hardcore gameplay:

“You should definitely choose your playstyle wisely though, as Othercide features good old-fashioned permadeath. If a unit dies, they’re gone for good, so you’ve got to be careful. This kind of punishment really keeps you on your toes, as I was for the entire demo.” – thanks Spencer!

And of course, we had a great opportunity to meet some of our followers who came by our stand, played Othercide demo and had a good laugh with our team! Thank you all for being a part of our community!

We hope we will have the chance to attend other great events to showcase the game this year!

In the meantime, don't forget to follow us on social media to follow the development of the game and wishlist our game on Steam to support us.

Cheers!

Hello my dear,

We are asking for your help with the translation of the Othercide Steam Page. We are primarily interested in help from community to translate:

• Chinese-Traditional,
• Chinese-Simplified,
• Japanese,
• Korean,
• Russian,
• Portuguese (Portugal),
• Portuguese (Brazil),
• Spanish (Latin America),
• Spanish
• Italian,
• and German.

However, any other languages available on Steam that you would like to help translate we would be very grateful for it.

You can find the Google Docs Folder with our original text in English and the translation we have now (and make any changes + add missing paragraphs) here:

CLICK HERE TO GO TO DOC

You can choose the Documents of the language you want to translate, open it in Google Docs and edit directly. Please use BLUE color for any changes you make and any texts you add.

Please translate only if you are fluent in the language you choose. 😊

Big thank you to all those who help with the translations from the Othercide Team!

Cheers,

LIGHTBULB CREW

”There are three distinct archetypes within the Daughters of Othercide, each one of them their own strengths and weaknesses. Let’s concentrate on our esoteric desperado: the Soulslinger. Nizar, Alex, here you go again!

Nizar and Alexandre, Game Designer and Art Director on Othercide

A Bullet In Between Their Eyes

Alex: Within the three classes we have in Othercide, the Soulslinger is by far my favorite; and I am not saying this because I am an absolute fan of Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series! (Well okay, it does play a part in my subjectivity…).

She has the full panoply of a “western spaghetti movie” design, but with an additional flavor coming from the lore. The Soulslinger is a sharp shooter, mastering a pair of heavy pistols, but also a mystic manipulator which enchants her weapons with spirits and ethereal essence, in order to master the deadliest effects.

Link to full dev blog

There are three distinct archetypes within the Daughters of Othercide, each one of them with their own strengths and weaknesses. Today let's take a better look at our monster slayer: the Blademaster.


Nizar and Alexandre, Game Designer and Art Director on Othercide
Lonely Blade In Darkness

Nizar: As Game Designers, we were at the origin of the Blademaster conception. Early in the development process, it appeared to be clear that we wanted a triumvirat of Daughters. To increase players’ strategic decision making, each daughter must have unique strengths and weaknesses: we didn’t want to create subtle variation of a single archetype.

Alex: Creating a class in Othercide is a crucial step: in addition of being the main characters of our players, each class must represent a clear function gameplay wise as well as follow the guidelines of our art direction. Building our classes was a long ongoing process, with a lot of iterations and questioning!

In my point of view – and this is applicable in multiple situations – a character rises from a couple of strong ideas. Those main “impulsions” don’t need to be very original, but must be clear and definitive, so that they can resonate along the creative process.

Read more on our website: https://www.othercidegame.com/blademaster-class-othercide/

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David and Yves, our Lead and Environment Artists on Othercide, are thrilled to show you how they created some environments for the Dark Corner!



Learn more about their journey, from research and historical investigation to their production pipeline and inspiration to create Othercide's distinctive atmosphere.

Discover exclusive assets we haven't shared yet with the community and how it is like to be an Environment Artist on Othercide. We are excited to share our work with you!

>> Read more

As we set out into 2019, we have an exciting and challenging year behind us. 2018 saw the concept of Othercide really takes form and turns into this magical thing we are all nursing to its completion right now. But it was far from easy!

Anders Larsson, Creative Director on Othercide



We started working on what has now become Othercide already back in 2016, together with a few members of the team. Initially we started out with the question: how we could make a tactical game where the characters would take on their own stories.

We were a fair bit along in the negotiations with a publisher around this project before they ended, and we set out with pre-production in the fall of 2017. Back then we were calling the project “Band of Hunters”, with the setting being a dark version of current Paris. As the pre-production continued, we were forced to deal with the limits of budget and team, which together with a strong drive from Alexandre in terms of Art Direction and world creation ended up delivering us into the dark corner in a parallel dimension, and the name Othercide.

Game design wise, we needed to strengthen the concept. The dynamic aspects of the tactical game we had brought were not yet clear enough so after lots of thought and iterations, we finally came up with a sort of turn-based system, but with no actual turns, only a time-line in which the actions played out. This was one of those moments when suddenly the parts of the game design that were logically difficult became obvious, and the dynamic aspect of the game became front and center. That was when the Initiative Sequence System was born.



At that point, the energy of team was tangible. Full of confidence in our game design concept we started iterating and…well you know how it is, it’s not that simple. The summer period was coming, but stress was high on the team shoulders as we decided to go out of the blue and officially announce our game, and big time: at Gamescom!

We only had a couple of weeks and worked very hard to deliver a compelling proof of concept.

With shaking hands at first, we multiplied meetings with press and partners, met lots of amazing people (special thanks to our lovely neighbors the Robot Gentleman and Raw Fury). We had such a great time and when the first previews came up, we were super happy! Feedback were positive, press was interested by our game and told us they want to see more soon!

2019 ahead looks to be an incredibly interesting year. The team is strong, and we are excited of the response we get from players and partners we are showing the game to. There remains an enormous amount of work to get Othercide to be the fantastic game we know it can be, but we are full of energy. With the support of everyone interested in Othercide we are certain we will be able to do it!