'Seventh Crystal Of Theia' - Adventure/puzzle/action game a la Uncharted/Tomb Raider

Hello fellow gamers and developers!

‘Seventh Crystal Of Theia’ is an epic adventure/puzzle/action game a la Uncharted and Tomb Raider, developed by Rimfrost Software.

This project was originally developed by only two men, Roland Strålberg (Programmer/Musician/Basic 3D Artist) and myself, Chris Van Wijmeersch (2D/3D Artist/Level Designer/Musician).
We first developed this game in Leadwerks Engine 2.5, but then had to change engines because Leadwerks was being re-written and had a couple of missing features at that time. We moved on to Unity Pro 4, but later realized that Unity lacked a few things we needed to develop ‘Seventh Crystal Of Theia’ (SCOT) properly. During that time, we also met a new talented member to join our team, a skilled Music Composer named Julian Schuller. :slight_smile:

UDK was an engine we also tried, but it was not as user-friendly as Unreal Engine 4 now is. For which i want to thank the guys at Epic for the awesome job they did by making UE so awesome!! :slight_smile:
After a few tries with Unreal Engine, we realized that UE has ALL (and more) than we’ll ever need to develop SCOT or any other game(s) in the future!

A few months back, we met a bunch of great guys from another dev team, called ‘Narcoleptic Studios’. They were working on a great game called ‘Phobia’, a psychological horror game. :slight_smile:
After a few talks, we started to discuss working together on both projects, SCOT and Phobia. It seemed like the right thing to do because both projects could use more manpower. :wink:

At the moment, we’re discussing a new name for the merged team. The new team would then have seven members. :slight_smile:

The current team members are (in no particular order):

  • Roland Strålberg - Programming/Musician/Basic 3D skills
  • Julian Schuller - Music Composer
  • Danny Chilvers - Environmental Artist/Level Design/3D Artist
    -** David James **- 3D Artist/Music Composer/Scripting
  • Chris Van Wijmeersch - 2D/3D Artist/Musician/Level Designer/Scripting
  • Patrick Griffiths - 3D artist/animator/Pixel Artist/Front-End Web Developer
  • Martin Dubravický - Concept Artist/Illustrator

Now, on to the game details. :wink:

The story:
'*Tom Reed, a rebellious archeologist that doesn’t mind stealing historical artefacts now and then (as long as the buyer is honest and the price is right), is on his way to Egypt after an emergency call from his parents.

Nearly there, Tom’s personnal airplane suddenly starts to malfunction. Even though he’s a pretty good pilot, he can not help his plane from crashing. Fortunally, he can eject on time out of the burning aircraft, and safely land on Egyptian soil using his parachute…

Tom needs to find his parents as soon as possible. But in the meantime…he has to survive the vast sandy and hot desert landscape all around him, and any other lurking dangers…a new adventure begins…*’

Game Features:

Gameplay:

  • First person 3D adventure/puzzle, similar to Tomb Raider and Uncharted type of games.
  • Walk, run, jump, climb walls/ladders, wall ledge strafing, gravity, platforming
  • Solve easy to challenging puzzles: logic puzzles, realtime physics puzzles, trigger puzzles, etc…
  • Enemy fighting: kill savage mutated humans, ‘normal’ humans and some special characters, using a variety of handweapons or bare-handed combat.
  • ‘Self-aware’ inventory system. Found items will activate/trigger ingame events automatically when player gets within close distance of the appropriate trigger.

Graphics:

  • Powered by Unreal Engine 4 technology. A professionnal engine that already has empowered hundreds of games, using AAA quality,
  • Global Illumination (powered by Enlighten, used in many AAA games),
  • Physically Based Shading to achieve ultra-realistic materials,
  • High quality textures, detailed models,
  • Cool particle effects used for bullet impacts, dust, fog, mist and more,
  • Millions of dynamic particles can receive and emit light within a scene.

Sound and Music:

  • High quality and atmospheric music,
  • Unreal Engine 4’s audio system allows for high quality immersive audio mixing,
  • Realistic sounds used to enhance the gaming experience.

Storyline:

  • Fantastical story with sudden plot changes about a middle aged adventureous archeologist that ‘accidently’ stumbles upon an evil organization wanting to take over the world using ancient magic crystals,
  • Ingame cutscenes unveiling bits of the story.

We are working really hard to get the first level gameplay ready. Screenshots of that will follow soon. :slight_smile:

Here are some concept art drawings by two of our talented members, Martin and Patrick. Martin did the concept for Durok, the bad *** bad guy for SCOT, while Patrick drew the concept for Tom Reed, the main character! :slight_smile:

Please, comment and make suggestions! We really appreciate that! Thanks!

The art looks great man. Keep up the good work. So how far are you into the development process? I am just starting out on art and Project Management Systems.

Thanks for the kind words, SIGames!

The progress is going fairly well. We need to convert a few things from what we had in Unity, to Unreal, but so far it’s not causing us any trouble to do so. We use the ALCS Pro system for wall climbing, ledge hanging, rope sliding and more, as it’s a very well done package suited for our needs. Also to help us speed up the development process.
Concept art drawings and 3D models are being made to later rig and animate, and we’re also working on setting up the mechanics for puzzles and interaction, aswell as some basic AI (to start with).

Cheers!