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Lethal Honor Essence is an obscure and punishing action-adventure roguelite with a dark, gloomy atmosphere and gothic hand-drawn graphic novel art. The player will be an agent of Lethal Honor, an organization that investigates and destroys the paranormal events all around the world. Features precise, strategical combat against eldritch creatures using melee combat and hundreds of different abilities in a dozen different locations. The player will wake up as a subject of study in a laboratory swarmed with demons and will need to unveil the mystery that surrounds the place and try to escape... But what lurks outside?
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Hello there, agents! Welcome to the second post about Lethal Honor: Essence video game development!
In this second post, we will talk about gameplay. We will describe the general gameplay, how it is played and why we chose it.
I have split this post into two different ones: the first one talking about the genre, and the second one resuming the general gameplay and a play session summary.
First: the Genre
The game is an action-adventure hack & slash roguelite.
Yeah, baby! There are a lot of words there! :) Let's break them down piece by piece:
Action:
Well... the word speaks for itself.
Dead-cells.com
Dead cells is a game by Motion Twin. It is a fantastic game with a lot of similarities with Lethal Honor: Essence. Or, should we say, WE have a lot of similarities with them, though our game is being in the 'cooking' for 20 years :(
WHAT: It has a meaning both in gameplay and in the story narration: the game has a lot of combat, dangerous situations, difficult encounters and the story is told so the player is in constant tension.
HOW: Lethal Honor will revolve around the combat, so it IS an action game! We will be battling against dozens of enemies and bosses, dodging traps, getting new loot, solving puzzles and successfully face challenges.
WHY: Lethal Honor is an agency that INVESTIGATES paranormal entities and usually takes a non-aggressive approach, gathering clues, talking with the local folks and performing rituals to banish the creatures. In this game we will be playing as a new agent that only wants to survive while understanding what happened there and, if possible, end it to help other people. So this is an "action" game, but there is a LOT of focus on the story and plot, of course!
Adventure:
Zelda Breath Of the Wild: Nintendo. All rights reserved.
WHAT: It is a video game subgenre that focuses on player (and gameplay) incremental development: the game will be adding new gameplay mechanics in the form of items, new accesses, storylines... that opens up the world to new zones/puzzles/enemies that were previously locked and will be unfolded as the player progresses through the game.
HOW: In LH:E, the player will unlock new items that allow future runs to access new zones, create shortcuts or battle new exciting bosses. For example, a "level 3 access card" in the laboratory that opens high-security areas, with new enemies and loot. Or, for example, a rune that allows the player to use shrines to instantly teleport to new zones. Besides, the game will have 7 different playable characters that will unlock new combat styles, zones, bosses and gameplay elements. Even those characters are unlocked gradually!!
WHY: Adventure genre is incredibly satisfying to the player: not only they improve their personal skill in every run, but they are rewarded with new ways and paths that were previously blocked. This means seeing a locked door in several runs and wonder what is behind it, and two hours later, being able to open it and actually see it!! That is utterly rewarding. Also, it gives us a way of creating shortcuts to advanced zones and bosses. Besides, giving the player new combat styles (with each new character) step by step let them master the game little by little, instead of overwhelming them with all available content at the same time!
Hack & slash:
God of War is one of the best examples in the hack & slash genre: melee combat, a lot of different strategies and enemies to kill.
WHAT: This is an action subgenre, that describes how the action is faced: real-time combat using melee weapons with a strategical approach.
HOW: In LH:E the combat will be slow and tactical, in contrast with those games with ultra-quick button smashing against tons of enemies.
LH:E will have a precise, tactical combat against few enemies at the same time, focusing on crowd control, defending, parrying and waiting for a window of opportunity to strike back and kill the enemies.
WHY: It is a genre that perfectly suits the agent combat style: they usually wield swords, axes and the like to kill enemies (because ranged weapons are not optimal to non-living creatures). The enemies (demons, zombies, ...) are incredibly strong: a human wouldn't stand a chance against even ONE of them. So the agent, which is WAY stronger and tougher, must master the defense, parry and deflect to survive. And they use special abilities to control the enemies (freeze, stop, snare) to face them one by one.
Roguelite:
WHAT: This is more a "set of gameplay mechanics" than a "genre" itself, at least within LH:E. In LH:E it should be called "roguelite", which is a different genre, but for the sake of simplicity, we'll use the first.
Roguelite is a genre in which each game (usually called 'run') starts with a fresh new character, that involves advancing throughout different maps that are randomly generated (so each map layout is different from any other), and ends with the player dying (permadeath), thus ending the 'run' and starting all over. "Roguelike" means slightly different mechanics: turn-based combat, tile-based movement, simpler gameplay, ...
HOW: Lethal Honor: Essence is a roguelite game because in each run we will play as a new, fresh agent, called "Lost Agent". He or she will have random abilities that synergize between them. He will progress through different zones killing enemies and bosses, looting items, watching events and unlocking new things (items, abilities, accesses...), and finally dying (or finishing the game).
WHY: To be honest, we decided to go "roguelite" because it provides more hours of gameplay for less development time. We are only two persons working on the game, so we wanted the most efficient way of using our time. Lethal Honor is a VAST universe with a lot of different stories to tell. But telling a story is a huge work: script, character, story, events... it needs a lot of work, and we simply cannot develop such a game in our maximum time of development. So we chose this genre so we can still tell a complex, appealing story using Dark Souls fantastic style: through events, enemies, item description and world structure narration style. More of this on its dedicated post in the next few weeks!
So this is it for today's post!! More of "gameplay" in the next one!
Then, we will start talking about the development process itself: game engine, general structure, design patterns, ...
Stay tuned! And thanks for reading!
Hello agents! Welcome to the first post about "Lethal Honor: Essence" video game development.
My name is Carlos Rubiales and I am the Lead Game Designer & Lead Game Programmer. I've been developing video games for 8 years now, mostly minigames and interactives for malls. I am a Unity certified developer since 2016, and I've been using this Game Engine for more than 5 years ;)
Well. about "Lethal Honor: Essence". What is LH:E?
For starters... Lethal Honor is the achievement of my lifelong dream: to become a video game developer and tell the world the story I've been working for almost 20 years.
Lethal Honor is MUCH, MUCH more than a video game. It's an universe, a story that has been in the making since I was 13 years old. And I am 33 right now!! It spans dozens of stories, hundreds of characters, arcs, present, past, future, other planes of existence... But WHAT is it?
Lethal Honor is based on a version of the real world in which every possible paranormal entity is (o can be) be real. Demons, zombies, werewolves, ghosts, vampires, fairies... threatens mankind every day, since biblical times.
Some sketches from our Lead Artist, Nunoh, for different visual styles for werewolves or zombies
The only way shield to protect humanity is Lethal Honor, an agency in charge of finding, investigating and destroying them. The executor arm of LH are the agents: modified humans with improved strength, dexterity and intelligence, which use advanced technological gadgets and have supernatural capabilities: telekinesis, pyrokinesis, instant transmission, invisibility, dissapear...
Some concept art about one of the agents: Raven, that is the main character of Lethal Honor: Chronicles, the main game of the franchise
LH was created in the mid 90, but since the dawn of times there have been people that served the same purpose: to save humanity from demons and any other eldritch entities.
LH:Essence is the first video game of the franchise. It is only ONE of dozens of stories, and it serves as a first approach to the universe.
It is an action hack & slash roguelite in 2.5D, with characters and enemies will beautiful, hand drawing art, similar to comics and graphic novels, and 3D scenary with handpainted textures. It will have a dark, obscure atmosphere, with a deep and well-forged story to unravel as the player discovers new events, conversations, bosses and items.
First idle animation. Beware the red eyes!!
Focuses on tactical, slow-paced combat, that combines physical combos and dozens of abilities to deal damage, stun or control the enemies.
Traps, relics, runes, challenges, quests... are some of the secondary mechanics that will be present in the game.
The game is currently at the end of the pre-production phase after 3 months of development, on our way to our first closed preAlpha, a small technical prototype that will feature all main and some secondary mechanics , for the developer team to test :)
In 2-3 months we want to have an open PreAlpha, so everyone can play the basics of the game and get a feeling of what it may become. The development will continue for at least 1 more year before publishing the game on Steam.
And that's all for now!!!
We will be posting again next thursday, and start talking about the game development itself: game engine, assets used, general configuration... and tell you more about the team.
Stay tuned!!
Thanks for reading!
You can check it at:
We will be posting our advances in the game, all focused on the developer side: how we do things here, why do we take gameplay decisions and such!
We will be posting twice a month. So stay tuned!
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