Blogs - Steamroller-Studios

We love zombie games here at Steamroller Studios. And so when we started discussing what our next game would be, of course the undead landed pretty high on our list of dream projects. So I started doing some rough sketches. At this point, we really didn't know much about the game, other than we were targeting mobile platforms. So while we ultimately decided to make PC, Mac, and Linux our target platforms, initially we tried to keep our designs simple enough to work with the limited hardware and smaller screens of mobile phones. After a few misses, we found we really liked the look of a particular boxy looking zombie. We could design something like that with limited polygons, which in turn meant we could put more zombies on screen. Basically we would use the art style to compensate for hardware limitations. If we hadn't originally started development on a limiting platform, we probably would never have found this style we like so much.The very next drawing I did was a zombie head that was extremely boxy. I showed it to Keith our programmer. The first thing he said was "Wow, a wooden zombie, that's a really cool idea!" I didn't mean for him to look like a wooden zombie, that was just a happy accident. But that didn't stop me from taking full credit. "Yes, that's a wooden zombie head, and yes I'm awesome for having thought of it." Now there were plenty of games with zombies in it, but none with WOODEN zombies in it. We had our hook that would help distinguish us from the horde of other zombie games. At least visually anyway, we'll get to gameplay later. So later that night I came up with the name "Deadwood". It was the perfect word to describe our wooden zombie creations. So now we had an idea. It was time to start designing wooden zombies on purpose.Right off the bat, we all liked this new direction. I did a few variations of enemies and then moved on to our heroes. I wanted to convey the same wooden feel to our main characters. Except of course they wouldn't be rotting, and would actually have eyeballs. You can see a few of my early conceptual drawings down below. This idea of making characters out of wood began to bleed over into everything else. From weapons to buildings, it influenced everything. A charming yet quirky world began to emerge that I just loved drawing. In the next few weeks I'll be taking you through my design process with other elements I created for Deadwood. But for now, back to the drawing board.

After a couple years of silently working on a few different projects, we are now charging full steam ahead on a game we are extremely passionate about. Steamroller Studios would like to officially announce we are currently developing "Deadwood" for PC, Mac, and Linux. We are putting elements of all of our favorite games into the project, as well as coming up with some very new and original ideas. What we can tell you about the game is that it will be a top down survival/action game with some strategy/tower defense elements in it. All set in a meticulously designed open world. While we are keeping the plot secret, we can tell you it will involve wooden characters, and zombies called "Deadwoods" We know zombie games are a dime a dozen, so we are reinventing the genre at every turn. We can't wait to show more of the game so keep your eyes peeled to our developer blog as we will be showing off tons of behind the scenes stuff as we get further along in development.