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Invertium: the story behind

Invertium started as a project at the beginning of 2013. I had a general idea about some gravity related mechanics from a prototyping process back in 2012, and I started to give some shape to that idea and created a simple prototype to get a first impression of it. I used Shiva3D for that, a multiplatform game engine that I used before for some tests and I really liked. At that moment, the scope of the game was pretty different: my idea was to create a simple 2D Android game with hand-painted graphics, as shown in this early pic:

However, that idea changed after several months of development. As a solo developer, and being a programmer and not an artist, creating those painted graphics was really time consuming. I also found that mobile was not the ideal platform for this kind of game, I wasn’t very comfortable with the feelings I got from the first builds for Android, mainly from an input point of view. So finally I decided to go for PC instead, and recreated all the graphic content I had using a pixel art style, lots quicker to make and more affordable for a programmer.

I worked on the game the following months really slowly due to personal reasons, and it wasn’t until the beginning of 2014 when I started to work more seriously to get the game finished. It took me around 4 or 5 months to build a beta version with a few levels and released a trailer of the game that can be watched here:

After releasing the beta, the trailer and opening a failed Greenlight campaign, I got a lot of feedback, what I should have gotten earlier in the development process to be honest. This feedback revealed several important issues from a gameplay and difficulty point of view, and I also detected how little visual appeal the game had at that time. However, I received good comments and strong points remarks from players too (including IndieCade jury, where I sent the game to) which made me trust in the potential of Invertium.

At that point, and after some time of meditation, I decided to look for an artist to team up and improve all those weak points of the game and come up with a better version of it. Then, Mario Manzanares comes on the scene. We have been working these last months on redesigning the game (from the aesthetics to the story or the gameplay) and replanning the project, willing to create a great and different gaming experience to share with you. We are very excited about what we can do together, stay tuned to discover how we make this happen!

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Ana was sculpted in Zbrush, then retopologized in Maya and finally painted using the new Substance Painter (Allegorithmic). We want to make a game playable by everyone, so I tried to keep the poly count to the minimum and stay very low poly.

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3D geeks over there? Check Ana´s model in all her glory thanks to sketchfab.

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Even since the very beginning, I tried to show the non-human life Ana is carrying shining through her clothes, futuristic exoskeletons or even weird apparatus, but it wasn’t until I draw some indian inspired tattoos when I was satisfied with her look. I wanted her to look like a strong woman, but I didn’t want to cover her body with unnecessary machinery, and I wanted her design to read as a test subject with some easy-to-wear maillot without over-sexualizing her femininity with ridiculous tiny outfits.

There’s a "street" version of her outfit for the levels beyond the lab (the “tutorial” ones) but I will speak about it in further updates :)

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Ana

This is Ana, the main character of Invertium. She is a capable strong woman, a mother and an ex-soldier.

The world where she lives in has been suffered recently a war against a non-human civilization of individuals with the power of alter the gravity to will, and the humanity is trying to mimic this astonishing power by making experiments with parasites that give this ability to their hosts. But no man alive has been able to resist the aggressive symbiosis with the parasite… until they tried someone capable of carrying another life inside: a woman.

Even since the very beginning, I tried to show the non-human life Ana is carrying shining through her clothes, futuristic exoskeletons or even weird apparatus, but it wasn’t until I drawn some indian inspired tattoos when I was satisfied with her look. I wanted her to look like a strong woman, but I didn’t want to cover her body with unnecessary machinery, and I wanted her design to read as a test subject with some easy-to-wear maillot without over-sexualizing her femininity with ridiculous tiny outfits.

It’s a strong fact that we are two men making this game, but we want to see more strong women portrayed in this media, so it’s very important for us to do this right. Interpretation (even idealization) is a big part of the design process, but I ended up looking at real woman examples, like Samantha Wright. She represents a lot of things that I wanted to see in our protagonist, and I guess her influence is pretty obvious in the design, right? :)

I’m very happy with Ana´s design, even though this is a “1.0 version” of her and I’m sure we will iterate the design over the development of the game. All the comments, feedback and even random thoughts about it are welcome!

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Hello world!

We are extremely excited to introduce you the dev blog of Invertium, an indie game developed by Chris Estevez (dev) and Mario Manzanares (art), two spaniard video game enthusiasts working in our spare time.

Invertium is basically a 2.5D platformer game with gravity based mechanics, but there’s so much more about it: We are developing characters, a deep story and one of our main goals is to achieve a unique look and feel for this. As indie developers we feel like thinking out of the box and exploring different possibilities is not only fun but interesting at the same time.

Here in this dev blog we want to share with the world most of the process, build a community, listen to what people have to say about what we are doing and of course, communicate with you. Feel free to send us questions, constructive feedback or even actual ideas for the game!

Invertium´s home is the internet, so let’s build something together :)