DIVINITY Support Ship is En Route!
May 8th
And we have battleships ladies and gentlemen. Plenty of large ships will be accompanying you on your travels as a DIVINITY mercenary. I know we’ve been a bit quiet over the last few weeks but we’re cooking up some really cool stuff that we can’t wait to share with you, so I hope you’ll stick around! And remember to befriend us on Twitter and Facebook because we’re always chatting it up over there!
Entering Earth’s Atmosphere and a Music Sample
Mar 26th
We have atmospheric entry! It looks better in motion, but being the tease that I am, I figured a time lapse would be more tasteful in a hipster kind of way. This scene is just a brief intro before one of the levels. The heat shield is made up of a few parts that breaks apart during the intro and if wanton destruction is your bag, I think you’ll like it. Development of Heaven Variant is certainly moving forward, and we all just kind of develop everything by the seat of pants according to what looks cool. I do wonder if level intros are going to become a thing or if we’ll just use them for a few levels here or there. If Twitter is any indication, people seem to dig them. We’ll see how things go, I suppose.
And don’t tell those people on Earth we’re here! You know how they overreact about things. We have the safety of the colonists to think about!
I’ve also gone ahead and uploaded the music track from our preview video online since we were getting quite a few requests for it. And speaking of, if there’s ever anything you want to see shoot us a line either through e-mail, a comment or even better: Twitter.
New Gameplay Preview Video
Feb 13th
HD LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN1y-b9TTnQ&hd=1
Our latest video is now online that shows what our new team has been up to! Please make sure you watch it in HD! There are a lot of new features highlighted among them are the new player ship design, tweaked gameplay, and a light peppering of cinematic gameplay.
In this new video we show our early city environment inside of an orbital colony. If you dig this video, please help us spread the word by retweeting, posting on Facebook, message boards, or just telling your friends next time you see them. I hope you’ll help us out!
And I really hope you’ll chime in and let our team know what you think! Cheers!
Introducing the Heaven Variant SC Fighter
Feb 8th
More pics below! Well, without further delay here’s a few pics of the ship you’ll be flying around. The soul-capable Heaven Variant fighter, manufactured in space for Colonial intervention missions. This vehicle comes equipped with a weapon axle to procure weapons mid-flight, and further, can rotate them on the axle for a 360 degree range of motion, however, depending on the type of weapon, the ship also automatically stabilizes itself if attempting to move while using a high power weapon rated higher than the ship’s axle was designed for. The wings and fins dynamically adjust with the body to assist in flight stabilization, and the ship’s hull is designed for both gravity and zero-g encounters! But what makes this ship state of the art is the DIVINITY Corporation SC-CELL technology allowing the fighter to tap into soul-capable energy production from the pilot’s own spirit, creating ferocious energy output on demand! Combine that with an AI based personal computer assistant, cool air conditioning, and adjustable seats, what more could you ask for? Turn-by-turn navigation? PSH! This thing practically drives itself while you make the minor adjustments in combat. They thought of everything.
More pics below! What do you think?
Blinding 1980s atmospheric colors for your enjoyment
The triumphant side-view (the view you’ll be looking at the most in-game)
Also: *sings* One of these pics is not like the other. *sings*
New Interview at Tech-Gaming
Jan 15th
The kind folks over at Tech-Gaming hosted Project Lead Jason Koohi in a podcast interview all about Heaven Variant, how the team got started, and slew of other fabulous topics! Check it out right here : http://www.tech-gaming.com/
The interview starts around 48 minute mark, but you should totally listen to the all of it. Also, bonus point for counting the number of times I say “kinda” during the interview! Haha. Cheers!
New Interview at Gaming Irresponsibly
Jan 3rd
First and foremost, Happy New Year! As 2012 progresses, we hope you’ll enjoy the last few months of your existence as humanity plunges into the depths of global doom!
But don’t let that ruin the time left you spend perusing the internet about upcoming indie games because the fine folks at Gaming Irresponsibly kindly interviewed our Project Lead, Jason Koohi, all about Heaven Variant and you can find that interview right here, so please be a dude and check it out, Brosef!
New Screens, Textures, and City Zoomin’
Dec 9th
Just a quick update to let you all know we’re alive. Development is going strong, still smoothing out rough edges, but the game is starting to look better every day! We’re hard at work and figured we should show a few screens. We’re at the point where we’re framing out our main stages and we’ve started get final assets set in stone. The city background is not final and not what we’re going to use: they’re default placeholders provided inside the UDK (the textures and the models we’re working on will look better with our style but we hope it gives you an idea of what we’re going for). Anyway, our team hopes you’re digging how things are turning out! If you do dig our work, please drop us a line on this blog, Twitter, or Facebook and tell all your buddies that might be interested! We need as much buzz as possible because we just don’t have the kind of marketing budget giant studios have. We are about as indie as you can get, a team of three, nearly homeless, working out of our bedrooms with a diet largely consisting of ramen and barbecue potato chips, so please help us out by passing the word along if you dig the direction we’re heading in!
Soundtrack Sampler #003
Oct 10th
Ever since we posted our SEPTEMBER GAMEPLAY VIDEO we’ve had a few requests for a dedicated sample of the music that we played in the background. So here ya go! By the way if you haven’t checked our our SEPTEMBER GAMEPLAY VIDEO you REALLY should! See? It’s in all caps and everyone knows CAPSLOCK instantly coats words with more awesomeness, right?
If there’s anything you folks really want to see you can always post straight here on this blog, on Twitter, or email us at : info AT zanrai DOT com. And a special thanks to everyone that has been giving us comments about everything we’ve been up to. Your kind words are very appreciated! Cheers!
September 2011 Alpha Video!!
Sep 1st
Our latest video is now online! What do you think?
We’re definitely not a bullet hell shmup. That, and we let you sacrifice agility to shoot in any direction which makes our gameplay a little different from traditional shmups. Our exact genre is more arcade or action-ish in nature, I suppose. We still don’t have a 3D modeler yet but we are actively looking, so please forgive our 3D stuff right now. The video is still in alpha and there is undoubtedly a few rough edges and hiccups but we hope you’ll forgive us! We demonstrate a few different weapons, show off some explosions, and how our levels are generally set up. We’re really excited to keep working on this and we hope you’ll follow our progress! Also, if you’re digging what we do, please tell your friends that are into this kind of stuff!
Oh yeah, make sure to watch the video in HD.
Soundtrack Sampler #002
Jul 28th
We have a new music sample boys and girls. This track was inspired by the classic intro music from cartoons in the 1980′s. You’ve got your grinding guitars which are really par for the course, a solid drum beat, a dash of exciting brass hits, and a lot of synthesizers bending the melody in every direction. This particular track will probably appear early on in the game. It’s exciting! It’s adventurous! It utilizes the same tone as the narrative (generally speaking) and compels you to destroy hundreds of bad guys! What do you think? Also, you might be able to pick out our theme from this track (it appears about 2/3 of the way through this sample). That little theme will make its way into a lot of our music since it’s so darn versatile! It’s a crime not to use it, right? No? It’s not? Well it should be!
In other news, we’ve been working exhaustively on making modifications to the code, the user interface (specifically the way character portraits blip in and out), and the way enemies fly on to the screen (and into the player’s clutches). We’ll be posting a lot about that stuff soon, because we want to show it off (and shamelessly want your attention like a toddler). So stay tuned! Cheers!
