Voxel art seems to have gained popularity among developers and underDogs Studios is the most recent one to jump on this bandwagon. Skatelander – an endless game – that has been in the development for a month now (with some final tunings left) and the studio will announce a release date soon.
The game will be releasing in the second half of March and the team at underDOGS is excited with this being their first game for iOS devices.
underDOGS Studios CEO and founder Vaibhav Chavan opens up to AnimationXpress.com on the same, “Skatelander is an endless skater game with voxel art being one of the main art components. One is not unknown to voxel art as it has been done with popular games before like Minecraft and Crossy Roads.”
The game has been on the drawing board by the studio for a long time and it had been prototyped before in the 2D version. The 3D version of the game was planned much later which the studio reveals that a different game was planned before this.
“We started working on the 3D version of the game from scratch; since we wanted to put 3D elements into the game and put a kind of wave perspective into the game,” expounds Vaibhav.
Skatelander has more than 50 characters in the game, which have been designed by the studio with almost 50-60 per cent of the characters having different environments to play with.
The studio is currently a four member team with Vaibhav being the one behind the design and marketing of the game, with one lead programmer and two senior level artists managing to put together the game.
The studio recently released the trailer of the game which has received good response from various industry threads and forums which Vaibhav says has given confidence to the team to further polish the game before the final release. Music has not been touched by the studio as yet but Vaibhav has disclosed that after the trailer got out people have been approaching the studio to create the music for the game.
“For music we want to go with something very retro in style, which complements the pixel arcade games bunched around with some peppy numbers. We are in talks with few people and we shall have some clarity in a week and mostly with the next trailer that will be out, you have the taste of the music as well,” he informs.
The gameplay trailer currently has the character only dodging obstacles but Vaibhav reveals that there are more tricks that are planned in the pipeline.
“The character can jump, perform tricks. And along with the new footage we’ll show a few tricks along with the tracks. There are stoppies, nosies, 360 and 900 turns – which will allow people to perform and there will also be some tricks that will be unlocked along the way,” he adds.
The game follows the freemium model, so one can expect a lot of in-app-purchases. With more than 50 characters that the studio has lined and some of them from the pop culture, like a saint, a ghost, a devil and a scientist among many more but no women characters can be seen. Not starting a gamergate here but just curious, Vaibhav ends: “The gameplay footage shows only a few characters but women characters do have their place in the game; one of them being a character that resembles the Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”