Changes: 10 Things you didn't Know about Deathstate

Revision as of 15:17, 25 May 2017

There are many fun little secrets that come from the world of Deathstate!!!

Here are just a few...

Deathstate boxart final — Deathstate Cover Art

The original concept for Deathstate came from an HTML5 game jam in late 2013.
Originally the game was titled “Motherlode” as a reference to the line “Bring back the motherlode, Barry" from Beyond the Black Rainbow. It was then changed to Deathstate due to the game series “Motherlode” and “Super Motherlode” already owning the name.
Deathstate was first shown to the public at PAX East 2015 and was included in the Indie Megabooth. The Indie Megabooth is a huge booth which is occupied by a number of small developers as a cheaper alternative to running a full expensive booth. Although it is a way for young developers to go to pax and promote their games, it is hard to be accepted into the Megabooth and only a handful of developers are chosen. Because of the overwhelming responses the game was worked on full time leading up to it’s release in October 2015.
Each run in Deathstate is generated from a complex procedural engine, offering lots of replayability. You never know what items and enemies you might run into during a playthrough.
Matt Leffer, lead developer of Deathstate, added mouse controls to the PC version to make it more friendly to people with physical disabilities who can only play the game with one hand. The controls can be found under options in the title menu or in-game and also features default Xbox 360 controls if you want to use a controller.
Enemies and characters have very few animations for walking and attacking to give a retro feel to the game. The character and enemy sprites contain very few frames of animation, winged enemies having the most sprite variation.
The bosses in Deathstate have the most work done on them regarding their AI, phases, attack patterns, and movements as opposed to the rest of the enemies. Each boss comes with it’s own special attack patterns and level of difficulty that's sure to challenge your dodging and memorization skills.
The music in Deathstate was inspired by horror movie soundtracks and contemporary synth wave music (Perturbator, Umberto). When making the music it was mostly composed with touchstone gothic sounds and synth instruments; some of which resemble sounds from the Sega Genesis.
A lot of things added to Deathstate have been from fans giving ideas and suggestions from steam forums and other social media. Fans and other people have been a big part of the process of testing for bugs and errors in the game. Overall the fans have been a huge motivation to step up our game. Secrets we’ve put in the game have been found very quickly inspiring us to keep creating more difficult challenges.

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 Here are just a few...
 [[File:Deathstate boxart final.jpg|thumb|276x276px|Deathstate Cover Art ]]
-* The original prototype of Deathstate came about as a company game jam in late 2013 but was put on the backboard until 2015.
+* The original concept for Deathstate came from an HTML5 game jam in late 2013.
-* Originally the game was titled “Motherload” as a reference to the line “Bring back the motherlode, Barry" from Beyond the Black Rainbow. It was then changed to Deathstate due to the game series “Motherload” and “Super Motherload” already owning the name.
+* Originally the game was titled “Motherlode” as a reference to the line “Bring back the motherlode, Barry" from Beyond the Black Rainbow. It was then changed to Deathstate due to the game series “Motherlode” and “Super Motherlode” already owning the name.
-* Deathstate was originally designed to be a mobile game, but it’s content and graphical details grew to be beyond what mobile devices could handle. It also birthed the single stick shooter mechanic of Deathstate since mobile games are often played with only one or two fingers.
 * Deathstate was first shown to the public at PAX East 2015 and was included in the Indie Megabooth. The Indie Megabooth is a huge booth which is occupied by a number of small developers as a cheaper alternative to running a full expensive booth. Although it is a way for young developers to go to pax and promote their games, it is hard to be accepted into the Megabooth and only a handful of developers are chosen. Because of the overwhelming responses the game was worked on full time leading up to it’s release in October 2015.
 * Each run in Deathstate is generated from a complex procedural engine, offering lots of replayability. You never know what items and enemies you might run into during a playthrough.