Dystopia is a 3d voxel art style game set in a post apocalyptic world made within The Sandbox metaverse. This is a short story driven game with some action-platformer elements.
”Things changed since they got here” - Random NPC
Early concept art for the market section of the town.
It all started back at the end of the year 2019. Me, being eager to learn more about cryptocurrencies and the potential they could have in the gaming industry.
Searching through the internet, somehow I manage to find this amazing community of creators and talented people mixing this two elements together.
The Sandbox.
As soon as I saw I could create my own assets and build my own worlds and even make a profit out of it, that was my go sign to give this a try.
I’m a 2d animator and always will be, but the fact that this was totally something I’ve never heard of and a possibility of being a step closer to “The Oasis” (from Ready Player One) I didn’t mind at all getting my hands dirty with some 3D stuff, specially with voxel art which I was going to give a try sooner or later.
So this was the perfect excuse for a new challenge, and here is some of the work and process of this new exciting adventure!
Right now the asset production of the entire game is 100% completed. Here are some renders of characters you will find along the way in your adventure and also some environmental assets.
Of course GameBuddy had to be in the game!
Building the LAND
Early concept of the LAND overview.
I wanted a place where players could come back and forward to pick up quests and then going to the “outsides” to explore the land of Dystopia.
So my first idea, since the early concept, was to build the city in the middle of the LAND and from there build challenges and puzzles for the players to explore or complete around it.
The locations and sizes of pretty much everything had to change once I started to actually build the land since this was my first time using the Game Maker tool (where players are allowed to build and visit other players experiences for now).
Most of the changes were made because of my lack of knowledge on land sizes and how my assets would look like and behave in game.
At this point my original idea of the town of Dystopia was pretty much done. Pretty disappointing from my point of view to tell you the truth *chuckle*.
The main buildings where there, the tall tower, the beautiful cherry blossom tree, even the colorful market tents.
But somehow the land and everything around it, felt pretty empty to me. Even for a post apocalyptic scenario! I still had (roughly) 60% of empty space around the land! Not even thinking about height or underground level design!
So I got to work…
The first step was adding challenges and jumping puzzles for the players to go through every time they needed to go outside or explore the surroundings.
This helped adding a more post apocalyptic feel to the land since I came up with the idea of diging this BIG holes with lava rivers running through them.
I then started to separate the land into plots where players will only get access through by doing quests or making some hard to master jumps.
This made the land feel more explorable and made me think on different ways and puzzles to hide extra stuff for players to discover.
Any Zelda fans?
During this weeks of land and world building I learned a lot, specially about level design. Like I said, I’m a 2d animator and gamedev, which pretty much eliminates a whole dimension to think of when building your worlds in a 3d space! *lol*.
So my next challenge was to research and play a lot of games… a lot… (you know, the usual amount).
I tried to analyse and learn from big games which I enjoyed playing when I was a kid, and of course, new huge open world games.
This helped me understand a lot of stuff that you don’t necessarily think of when building games in a 2d environment. For example, hiding stuff behind mountains or walls or playing around with the depth of view and angles of the camera which the player moves.
Little things like that helped me a lot on world building, exploration and hiding things for the players to uncover while they play through the world seamlessly.
Can you get here? Hidden rare part location
The world kept evolving and getting better and better whenever I added more quests and puzzles. Definitely one of the best game development experiences I have ever had so far.
My plans for Dystopia are to keep evolving and changing the world you visit. It is becoming a real place to visit and play around!
And so far that is it travelers! I will keep you posted on future updates for Dystopia or other worlds I will be building at The Sandbox Metaverse!
See you on the other side, BELIEVE.
The Sandbox
Create and build your own gaming experiences in The Sandbox metaverse