Starting in March we began working on our key art with Brenda and the team at Fellow Traveller. Suzerain revolves around Anton Rayne and what the player will do in his shoes, so we decided to focus the main piece around the main character. First, we started with broad ideas of composition. The depth focuses and other layer concepts helped us visualise the essence of what the scene would be. In this stage we thought about contrast and how the visual would appeal to the player.
After discussing we decided to pick option D due to its stark contrast and central composition. Another element that was important for us was the Presidential Office where most of the game takes place. Brenda moved on to improve the key art by adding further detail and visual improvements. Below you can see it take shape closer to the final version.
We enjoyed where the key art was headed but certain elements were a little too much like too many windows, white curtains minimising the contrast and how much focus the flags took away from the central figure. After a last round of discussions, we moved to the final version you can see below.
We are incredibly happy with the result and hope you are too!
Another big thing that happened around the same timeframe was our Trailer which we developed with James. Our process with the trailer was different but had some similarities. Suzerain is quite the long and complicated game so expressing it in less than two minutes proved a challenge.
We worked on visual drafts with work in progress music to experiment. In this phase we discussed what to show and how the trailer would flow. A total of seven drafts were created until we finally honed down the feel of the trailer. Our focus was to show the core of the game. This meant that we needed to communicate the backstory slightly which ended up being the newspaper section in the intro giving an idea of the situation.
The focus obviously was to communicate that Anton was the President but there were other important focuses like showing the reforms, the economy, and the different opinions of characters. After improving our visuals and finalising the music we ended up with a solid trailer.
Last but not least was our big LNC demo which we spent a week or so preparing. We also recorded a gameplay video and interview video for the event which you can watch above. Our team members also had the opportunity to host a panel at the very beginning of the digital convention!
The demo reception has been incredibly positive. Torpor Games has been swarmed with positive messages and also a lot of constructive feedback on how to improve Suzerain. We took our time and read literally everything. We discuss your opinions internally and improve the game accordingly where possible. We even pushed two hotfixes throughout the event and made several improvements! All in all, our team is very satisfied by the results. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
We will share a new lore post soon and update you on the next developments.
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Thank you and see you next time citizen, Glory to Sordland!
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