Hellpoint - Souls-like in Space

Our game came out in end of July 2019, and the DLC - Blue Sun - is coming out soon. I totally forgot to post about it here. Pretty sure I submitted it to #MadeWithUnity, but never got any feedback.

Hellpoint is an intense action RPG taking place on Irid Novo, a derelict space station soaked in an intoxicating dark sci fi atmosphere. Fight dreadful creatures, face the Cosmic Gods and unravel their twisted story. Should the challenge be too great, play with a friend in local or online coop.

You've read it right; the game has online and splitscreen coop.

Available on:
- Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/628670/Hellpoint/
- Epic: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p/hellpoint
- GoG: https://www.gog.com/game/hellpoint
- Stadia: https://stadiasource.com/game/206/Hellpoint
- PlayStation 4/5: https://store.playstation.com/en-ca/product/UP0097-CUSA17806_00-HELLPOINT0000000/ (Native PS5 coming soon)
- Xbox One/Series: https://www.xbox.com/en-NZ/games/store/hellpoint/9NT99F4GCVC4/0010 (Native X|S coming soon)
- Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/hellpoint-switch/

Trivia:
- Made with a team of 11 people; only 1 programmer, 1 designer.
- Uses our own lighting system, multithreaded LODs system, sectorization, occlusion, AI, character controller.

 

Hi Lightstriker, this game looks really impressive, I checked out the reviews too, and found them to be quite encouraging so kudos on that, amazing trailer btw, really gives a good vibe. If you dont mind, can you share how many cumulative downloads or views you guys have accumulated till now, just for my personal statistics ❥

 

Views? Depends on what platforms.
I can say our SQL backend has a little over 262k unique users, but that only counts people who plays the game using a launcher/online.
On Steam we have a bit over 212k wish list right now.

 

Ah thats what I wanted to know, thats amazing. I loved your overall style and was just intrigued by how many people you had attracted. Good luck in the future.

 

More "Trivia" pls.

How long was the development time?
1 programmer, 1 designer, what did the other 9 devs do in this project?
Have you cut out content? (too big planning, then shrinking the project to release it maybe - just asking because we are doing this right now)
How was the motivation? I read something on your website about "archives of madness" or something, but maybe I am putting too much thought into these words ..
When was the first playtest? How did it turn out? Have playtest-results impacted the game design?
Have you had a plan before you started? A detailed GDD with all mechanics and story written down?

Basically asking - how were you able to finish it? (I am sitting here, with about 30 unfinished projects, some, we worked on more than one year)

 

• 1 Designer
• 1 Programmer
• 1 UI Artists
• 2 Animators
• 2 Character Artists
• 2 3D Artists
• 2 Level Artists

Rigging, audio integration and music was done externally, since they never required full time.

We have cut some content very early, which we are doing in a DLC now. My advice; cut early, before it get too painful to cut.

Motivation was pretty good. One thing that help - I think - was that we had a lot of "side-contracts" to bring money in. For example, the team made the dungeons of Immortal Rising Phoenix, and some ports.

The playtests didn't impact the game design much; but it did impact the level design - especially the progression and "tutorialization" a lot. We were expecting players to figure out things on their own a bit too much.

We started in November 2015, released in July 2020. However, we didn't work 5 years on it. Closer to 40 months total.

We also did the porting internally (with exception of the first pass on the Switch).

We were able to finish it because we had to. The beauty of having a publishing deal signed.

 

Thanks a lot for those insights