Steel Hunters - Co-op Mech Diablo Meets Monster Hunter

HI! Me and a team of people I can hopefully eventually pay are making: Steel Hunters. The gist:

**A THIRD-PERSON ACTION-ADVENTURE CO-OP SANDBOX WHERE YOU BUILD FULLY-CUSTOMIZED MECHS TO TAKE DOWN ROBOTIC TITANS.

BUILD. PLAN. EXECUTE. ADAPT. DESTROY.**

Basically, what the game is: an action-adventure oriented Mech game with a lot of procedural systems, an incredibly responsive and dynamic sandbox work (each environment is about 16km^2), deep and profoundly-impactful customization options, and more. The goal: a Monster Hunter-esque mission structure in which you take down enormous, complex, multi-system “Behemoths”. Get loot. Improve your mech. Take on a new mission. Make the best make. Mech-make.

Thus far, everything in the game has just been me toiling away for a while, but I think it’s a pretty decent example of what can be achieved in UE4 even by a single person. I hope y’all dig it. Our first public trailer will be coming within a month or so.

Steel Hunters — TRENT POLACK'S SITE](Steel Hunters — TRENT POLACK'S SITE)

https://joy-machine.com/wp-content/gallery/steel-hunters-screen-shots/sh_highres_marketing_01.png

https://joy-machine.com/wp-content/gallery/steel-hunters-screen-shots/the_shape_of_things_to_come.PNG

Oh Yeah, Job Opportunities

Oh, and an additional thing: I’m currently starting to seek out potential hires for Joy Machine to help me make this game. Ultimately, these roles will be full-time positions (distributed team, so remote work), but that’s dependent on securing financing for the game’s development – and these conversations are already ongoing. If you think you may be interested in working on the game, these are the roles I’m looking to fill (all Senior-level roles):

  • Gameplay/AI Developer
  • Networking/Full-Stack Developer
  • Engine/Renderer Developer
  • Generalist Game Designer (required specialties: level design and combat design)

As I said, the filling of these positions is dependent on actually having the full budget for the game, but I’m fairly confident in the likelihood of that. My primary goal right now is to seek out candidates for these positions ahead of time so, once the money’s there, work can begin rapidly. Also I’m… Discerning about these positions, as they’re the bedrock of Joy Machine’s initial team, and my business plan is aimed at providing the team with secure, stable employment indefinitely.

If you’re down with all of this, just toss me an email.

Been following along on discord… Looks amazing! Good luck securing funding I can’t wait until this gets made!

Big mechs with rockets? Sign me up.

Looks great! How much of it d’you have up and runnin’ at the moment?

Oh yeah, even I had to rollback to 4.10 because of the strange graphical glitches I keep gettin’ after porting to 4.14. Sad though, I really wanted to play around with some of the new features in the patch notes.

So you plannin’ to go Kickstarter? Or d’you have somethin’ else in mind?

I also just posted what may be the first post I’ve written about game design in almost four years (I got tired of it for a while). It answers some questions people have had about the game as well as starts to go into my design philosophy a bit: https://joy-machine.com/devlog/a-systemic-approach-to-ground-up-game-design

Hey y’all (I deleted a bunch of my posts in since they were crazy outdated). I also updated the initial post.

We just launched the new Steel Hunters game page. We were working on a trailer, but I decided to delay it for a while as it had to coincide with some other SEEKRUT events going on; that said, I’d expect it out by the end of July. The trailer. Not the game. Oh god, not the game.

Also, in case you feel the desire, I post quite a bit both from the development and design side of things as well as the “running a company” side of things on the Joy Machine blog.

<3

I too wish to Hunt some Steel in a fantastic future that involves giant robots and explosions. :smiley:

how are things going Trent?

It’s going pretty well! I’ve got enough moneys to take me through May, and I hope to have a trailer/publisher demo ready by mid-april or so. Then I need to figure out a way to get either a publishing deal or enough of an investment somehow to continue on it full-time.

I’ve been on mostly a media blackout for it since early February as I get real stuff in the game and such, but it’s definitely coming along; I’ve been doing a lot of backend and game feature coding the last few months, so that’s (finally) going to start showing off well soon.

As always, more : https://blog.joy-machine.com/