Hello everyone, Conor here! Welcome to Sunken Shadows. I'm sure many of you are curious about the whereabouts, whatabouts, and whyabouts of this game, which is what I'm excited to introduce you to.

What exactly is Sunken Shadows?

As you may have noticed through our main page, we're doing horror! Particularly third-person horror set in the deep ocean where you play as an underwater salvage mech. The idea came up in a design meeting we had all the way back in July. There were all sorts of ideas shared around, from a twin-stick shooter where you play as a fleet of ships to a 2D platformer where you play as a bunny with bombs. We ultimately decided on an underwater horror game as it inspired the most passion and excitement from the team. After that, we went to play some games such as the Dead Space series and Subnautica. Dead Space 1 in particular informed a lot of our design decisions. In particular, the over-the-shoulder camera (originally the game was pitched to be isometric), and the UI. 

We became really excited about all these developments and got working straight away.

What's been worked on so far?

A lot to put it shortly. Our Game Design Document (GDD) has been going great. We've planned out our movement and weapon system, begun designing the mech and enemies, and even planned out the areas the player will explore.  Most impressively in my personal opinion, we manage to get some well-functioning prototypes done. Below is a demonstration of our movement & map system, and our combat system in its current state.

Mech movement and map.

Mech shooting

As for what we want to get done next week: our designers are working hard in fleshing out the story and the weapons system, our main artist is continuing to make a model for the mech, and I'll be implementing more of the moveset, such as a melee attack. I've seen the works in progress of the model and it's looking great so far. We will also be having a design meeting on Monday, mostly about what cool enemies we can come up with and how the back of the mech will look, as that's where a lot of the UI will be.

Who's the team?

We made the team early to pick the best of the best in our class.

Conor Mulgrew - Production Co-Ordinator, Developer, Test Co-Ordinator. I got this great team together, was responsible for the player movement and map implementation, and am writing this post right now. Hi!

Jason Quinn - Lead Designer, Artist - He's the mastermind behind the initial concept, has been coming up with the story and designing/modeling some enemies as we speak.

Jack Mckenna - Lead Developer, Designer - The weapons master. He's been both designing and implementing the weapons system down in the Unity trenches.

Kayne Doody - Lead Artist - He's been spending a lot of time designing and modeling the mech player character and is doing great so far. He will also be responsible for a lot of environment art in the future.

Trust me when I say this team is pretty great. I'll see you guys next week. Have a nice weekend!

-Conor