AWOL artwork

Before settling on Overgrowth, David and I kicked around a few different ideas. We have a lot of leftover concepts, screenshots, and art assets from trying out these ideas, so I thought we should show them to you!

One of these ideas, called AWOL, was a mouse-only cover shooter game inspired by the classic arcade game Cabal. Here is a gameplay concept:

As you can see, the camera angle is not the common cinematic over-the-shoulder camera, but a higher arcade-like angle. This makes it easier to see where your enemies are and which parts of your cover remain intact.

Meet Woly, the AWOL commando.

He is such a badass that he kept fighting even after his whole army surrendered. He is so tough that he just duct-tapes his bullet wounds and keeps going. Even when the enemies use mind control radio waves to deceive him, the shrapnel in his brain helps him see through the deception.

There is also a tenacious war reporter who follows him everywhere, shielded by a light-bending cloak, broadcasting live using a flying camera.

While the enemies use this broadcast to find out where he is, he uses it to get an aerial perspective of the battlefield. The picture above shows the reporter in her field gear -- she uses the visor to see and control her flying camera, and has a landing harness for it on her back.

Since the enemy soldiers always find themselves fighting amidst waist-high walls, some of them have actually started mounting cameras on their helmets to see over them.

Aside from concepts, I actually finished a number of prototype assets to test out the art style. Here are some examples of environment props:

This bust of Woly is actually my first sculpted game asset, and one of my first using baked normal maps.

I am still pretty happy with these electrical transformers:

I also still like the design for Woly's assault rifle. On the other hand, the asset could use some more detail, and the scope has some normal map problems.

Over the years I feel I have improved a lot as an artist. I would still like to make an over-the-top action shooter at some point, but hopefully now I could make it much cooler.

David did some really interesting technology for this project also. Stay tuned for part 2!