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[In the latest Road to the IGF interview with 2010 Independent Games Festival finalists, we speak with S2 Games' Laura Baker about DotA-inspired multiplayer action RPG Heroes of Newerth, a finalist in the Technical Excellence category.]

Heroes of Newerth (HoN) is a session-based multiplayer action RPG that acts as a spiritual successor to popular WarCraft III mod Defense of the Ancients -- but aims to renovate its graphics and gameplay.

Two teams of five playing as special Hero units try to destroy one another's bases. The result is a tactical team-based experience. Here, S2 Games' Laura Baker discusses the project's inspirations and the challenging balancing act between serving DotA fans and making the game accessible to those who never played it.

What is your background in making games?

S2 has always focused on competitive multiplayer titles, starting with Savage - The Battle for Newerth in 2003, followed by Savage 2 in early 2008, and ultimately followed up with our latest title, Heroes of Newerth. We're a pretty small studio that (as cliche as this sounds) likes to make the games that we enjoy playing.

What development tools did you use?

On the art side of things we use 3DS Studio Max, Adobe Photoshop, ZBrush, and I think xNormal. Our programmers pretty much just use Visual Studio 2005. The design team uses the ever-handy notepad++ to modify much of the game mechanics and hero abilities as needed. Beyond that, we haven't really used much middleware, our engine was made from scratch and most of the features and functions we needed our programmers were able to write for us.

How long did you work on the game?

About three years total, including engine development (which was shared by Savage 2). The bulk of the HoN-exclusive work has been going on for about 2 years. As for how much time remains.. well, we're getting ready to go to open beta soon, but we'll continue working on HoN for a long, long time to come.

HoN takes cues from WarCraft III mod Defense of the Ancients, right? What made you want to build on that?

Well, it comes back to making the sort of games we like to play. At S2, we played DotA in the office for a while and loved it, but couldn't help but realize how much better it could be if it only had certain bells and whistles and other improvements. We really think HoN can take the DotA-style gameplay to new heights, having not been held back by many of the limitations DotA had.

The game seems aimed for an audience of, to put it loosely, genre fans. How did you know where to innovate and where to be familiar?

The main goal was always to appeal to the DotA fans first and foremost. There's definitely a balancing act between making HoN familiar to DotA fans yet accessible to players who had never played DotA before.

We'll have a tutorial by release, which helps, but in general we innovated in ways that made sense when there was very little gameplay downside to doing so.

The art is exceptionally lovely. What considerations did you have when assembling heroes and Hellbourne that look lifelike and diverse?

The main considerations when making art in HoN are cool-factor and gameplay. Our art director Jesse Hayes is always stressing a certain style and wanting things to be exciting and cool, for lack of a better term.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the human imagination isn't the only limitation here -- we are constantly making efforts to ensure that the art doesn't negatively impact the gameplay. Visuals for a spell have to be clear and precise, each hero needs to be a certain size (so they can take the same paths through the forest as other heroes), and we like to have visual feedback for nearly everything without making battles feel too cluttered.

If you could start the project over again, what would you do differently?

I don't think there are many things that we would do differently, actually. We learned a lot from developing our previous titles, and applied that knowledge to HoN's development. In a way, HoN was our "second chance" in which we got to do things a bit differently.

Were there any elements that you experimented with that just flat out didn't work with your vision?

Hm, there were a few heroes that never saw the light of day that didn't really work out. Or rather, they were re-worked until they did work out. For the most part, though, we've been lucky to be building off a concept that has already been proven with DotA, and we've had years to learn what does and doesn't work and get a really strong grasp on what we're doing, so we haven't really had any major problems.

Have you played any of the other IGF finalists? Any games you particularly enjoyed?

Unfortunately, no. We've been crunching pretty hard here lately, but I look forward to checking them out sooner or later.

What do you think of the current state of the indie scene?

I think we're getting more avenues for indie developers to get their games out there. Digital distribution has really made it possible for companies that can't afford to sell retail to still be able to sell their games. Development tools (including complete game engines) are becoming more available too.

It excites me that if someone is determined enough, they really can make a completely playable game with a pretty small budget. At the same time, huge-budget titles really make it difficult for indie developers to compete in the single-player market, I think. Huge cinematics, voice acting, and tons of play time are becoming the norm for single-player games these days, and indie companies just don't have the resources to pull off games with that type of scope.

I think indie titles have the most success as puzzle games or multiplayer-focused games. I kind of see two classes of games here: the epic 50-gigabyte single-player titles intended for hours and hours of play, and the small, accessible short-term titles (some multiplayer ones aren't so short-term). I think both classes of games have a lot to offer, and I think the added diversity is something most gamers would welcome.

[Previous 'Road To The IGF' interview subjects have included Enviro-Bear 2000 developer Justin Smith, Rocketbirds: Revolution's co-creators Sian Yue Tan and Teck Lee Tan, Vessel co-creator John Krajewski, Trauma creator Krystian Majewski, Super Meat Boy co-creators Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, Sidhe's Mario Wynands, who worked on Shatter, Daniel Benmergui, creator of Today I Die, Klei Entertainment's Jamie Cheng, executive producer on Shank, Star Guard creator Loren Schmidt, Miegakure developer Marc Ten Bosch, Joe Danger creator Hello Games, Limbo partner Dino Patti, Closure's Tyler Glaiel and Jon Schubbe, and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity's Ichiro Lambe.]

[In the latest Road to the IGF interview with 2010 Independent Games Festival finalists, we speak with designer Tyler Glaiel and artist Jon Schubbe about Closure, a finalist in both the Excellence in Audio and Technical Excellence categories.]

Closure, first introduced in a Flash version, is a puzzler that challenges a very basic principle of gaming: That light is always good and darkness is always bad. In Closure, that which is illuminated exists, and that which isn't, doesn't, producing no end of brain-bending environments.

Here, programmer, designer, producer and director Tyler Glaiel and artist Jon Schubbe discuss their design and inspirations -- and the upcoming expanded version of the game's subtly sinister undertones.

What is your background in making games?

Tyler: I've been interested in game development pretty much my whole life. When I was young, I used to draw levels for Mario and Sonic on big sheets of paper and pretend to play through them in my mind, and thought, "man I wish I was the one who designed these games, cause I have so many ideas".

I got to play around with actually making a game when I was 11 (using Flash 4, titled "Pigeon Pooper"), and have been practicing and evolving my skills ever since.

Jon: One of the first games I made was an RPG Maker game called Book of Miseries and Mysteries (Copyright 2002 Jon Schubbe Inc) and from then on, I've been making personal Flash animations and games for Newgrounds.com in my spare time.

What development tools did you use?

Tyler: I use flash all the time for prototypes and web games. The new version of Closure is written in C++ (XCode on the Mac, Visual c++ Express on Windows). And I'm powered by Coffee™.

Jon: Adobe products get me by.

How long did you work on the game?

Tyler: The Flash prototype took two months to make. Following that, we've been working on the new version for about nine months so far. There is still a year or more to go to finish it up, and business stuff can move pretty slowly at times.

What gave you the inspiration to do a game that worked with light and dark contrasts, and how did you come up with the main concept?

Tyler: In most games that have "dark levels", there is a very distinct separation between darkness and light. It's usually "Dark = Bad, Light = Good", or in stealth games, it's flipped.

I hate that dumb division between the two, so this game sorta plays with how, in some situations, you need the light, and in others it just gets in the way. The concept was just an idea that popped into my head during brainstorming.

One thing I noticed about it when I played it was the odd little touches that gave the world in-game more of a sense of place, rather than simply being a puzzle-oriented geometric landscape. Can you talk about that, and why were there mailboxes?

Jon: Tyler's past puzzle games have mostly been very simple, abstract, graphic design-looking. For the Flash version of the game, I came in to animate a character and draw environment assets to enhance the experience and give the game a vague storyline.

Mailboxes are used to represent the fact that you are on a road outside people's homes, and eventually leading you into a forest. In our latest new version, being created from the ground up, I am animating and drawing all new graphics for the new game.

I will also be essentially decorating the landscape this time, creating a whole new abstract appearance for the new game, as opposed to the old geometric pattern in the Flash game.

The title is very distinct. In what ways does it relate to the game concept, and did you mean to give the experience of playing it such a subtly sinister overtone?

Tyler: The word "Closure" means about 500 different things. The way to advance through levels is to go through a door (closing and opening a door), and the storyline and plot deals with closure to an extent, but the main reason the title was picked was because of the gameplay.

I read Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics", and he had a chapter on "closure", and about how it's how the brain connects images together, or how if you see two parts of a bridge obscured (by darkness, per say), your brain connects those images together.

He had a panel in that chapter where he wondered if stuff he couldn't see disappeared (behind him), and the reason the brain actually remembers that there is something there is through the process of "closure". I was like, whoa, that fits my game, except I'm forcing people to ignore that instinct.

That's where the name comes from (and is a way more interesting story than where the idea came from, but everyone always cares more about the idea's inspiration for some reason).

It's also funny, cause the word can mean so many different things, the number of puns that have come about during it's development, like "foreClosure", "bringing closure to Closure", and others too.

Jon: Blair Herter from X-Play: "These two guys were in a relationship at one point and 'Closure' is what they didn't have have in their relationship."

If you could start the project over again, what would you do differently?

Jon: The project IS being started over again! The new version of the game is the one that was entered into the IGF! From the old one, I am including lots of hi-def artwork and smoother animation for loads of new levels with new mechanics and sound.

Tyler: Yeah, the Flash version had a lot wrong with it. I could go over it in super detail everything that went wrong, but it would take PAGES. Luckily, since only two months were invested in it, it was completely painless to just start from scratch for the big version.

No more Flash (it's slow), HD so there's more room for designing interesting levels and creating interesting mood and plot, less "guesswork" puzzles and more "thinking" puzzles, less lag, and more mechanics to allow for more variety of puzzles without resorting to some of the cheap tricks theFflash one did to extend the game. Physics, water, spotlights, and more. It's kinda nice to work off of a base project like that that got a ton of feedback.

Were there any elements that you experimented with that just flat out didn't work with your vision?

Tyler: There were a lot of levels I had to trash, and a couple stuff in the Flash version that just wasn't an interesting enough mechanic to redo in the new version. We've yet to implement our riskiest idea though, so stuff remains to be seen.

Jon: As far as graphics go, I'm experimenting with different styles of black and white, keeping the style of the atmosphere as close as possible to the first game, while improving it vastly. Some things that don't work at all with the atmosphere is sometimes my cartoony drawing style to things gets in the way.

I'm keeping the drawings right on the edge of cartoony and creepy to create a unique look for the limited black and white palette of the game.

Have you played any of the other IGF finalists? Any games you particularly enjoyed?

Tyler: I've played Super Meat Boy, a little bit of Rocketbirds' demo, Star Guard, Today I Die, Tuning, and a bunch of the student winners too (Puzzle Bloom, Continuity, and Spectre). Super Meat Boy is great, so is Today I Die and Tuning, and I'm really excited for this year's selection, since there's a ton on the list I want to try, like Vessel and Monaco.

Jon: Of course! Meat Boy's Flash version was a lot of fun because I love masochistic platforming. Shank is a fun game with sweet combos and I like the comic book ink-shaded look to it. It complements the over-the-top action.

I've also played Tuning and Today I Die, which are fantastic abstract experiences compared to your every day 'video games'. I've also played Puzzle Bloom in the Student Showcase, and it was a very fun and challenging experience.

Spectre is another I've played from the Student Showcase and it has a cool unique art direction and way of storytelling. Heroes of Newerth I haven't played, but I have played DotA, a WarCraft III mod that HoN was based off, so I could probably predict that game is amazing too.

What do you think of the current state of the indie scene?

Tyler: It is great. Two years ago all I knew about the indie scene was Gish, Alien Hominid, and Castle Crashers. Then I got involved in it a little (after realizing that what I've been doing for so long IS indie development), and it's been one hell of a ride since then.

It's crazy the people I've met and the places I've been since then, and it doesn't look to be getting stale any time soon.

Jon: I think it's great! There's a lot of dispute over the definition of 'indie' but I think people know deep down that combining the various personal situations people are in as they make the game, and the final product, they can judge whether or not it is 'indie' by intuition for themselves.

[Previous 'Road To The IGF' interview subjects have included Enviro-Bear 2000 developer Justin Smith, Rocketbirds: Revolution's co-creators Sian Yue Tan and Teck Lee Tan, Vessel co-creator John Krajewski, Trauma creator Krystian Majewski, Super Meat Boy co-creators Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, Sidhe's Mario Wynands, who worked on Shatter, Daniel Benmergui, creator of Today I Die, Klei Entertainment's Jamie Cheng, executive producer on Shank, Star Guard creator Loren Schmidt, Miegakure developer Marc Ten Bosch, Joe Danger creator Hello Games, and Limbo partner Dino Patti.]

Let's take a look at the latest interviews with indie game developers on the web. Highlights include: the continuation of Gamasutra's Road to the IGF series, DIYGamer's coverage on Student Showcase finalists, Kieron Gillen speaks to two Nuovo award contenders, and Petri Purho sheds some light about the socks he wears.

Road To The IGF: Developer Interview - Star Guard's Loren Schmidt
"Schmidt explains why the term 'retro game' makes him uncomfortable, the inspirations for Star Guard, and expressing narrative within the confines of 'low-fi.'"

Road To The IGF: Developer Interview - Klei Entertainment's Shank
"Jamie Cheng (CEO of Klei and executive producer on Shank) gives more background on the development of Shank, life after releasing the digital release Eets, and why the studio decided to explore the classic 2D brawler genre."

DIYgamer: IGF Student Winner Interviews - Puddle
"The French students behind the physics based liquid-motion title Puddle took a moment to answer a few questions about their game and talk about their future."

DIYgamer: IGF Student Winner Interviews - Devil’s Tuning Fork
"Our latest Q & A is with the team behind the title Devil's Tuning Fork. It's an innovative title and were able to discuss the game with four members of the development team."

Rock, Paper, Shotgun: IGF Factor 2010 - Tuning
"As the Independent Game Festival approaches, I thought a series of short interviews with all the PC-relevant short-listed entries would be an idea. First up is cactus who received a nomination for the Nuovo Award for the abstractly beautiful platformer Tuning."

Rock, Paper, Shotgun: IGF Factor 2010 - Today I Die
"Today I Die is a poetic, short-form work which has been shortlisted for the Nuovo award in this year's festival. Read on to find out what's on Daniel's mind in our interview."

Uncommon Assembly: Valentinel Hopes
"Ika (Aliceffekt) is a Montreal-based illustrator, designer, musician, and experimental game creator who somehow managed to take a break from all that to answer a few questions about creating the amazing world of Valentinel Hopes."

Kloonigames: Gamereactor Interview with Petri Purho
"While I was at Nordic Game Jam I bumped into some journalists from Gamereactor, who decided to do an interview with me. We talked mostly about Crayon Physics Deluxe and covered some other areas as well (like what I'm working on now) and talked about my socks." Continue reading

[In the latest Road to the IGF interview with <a href="2010 IGF finalists, we speak with Star Guard's Loren Schmidt, who explains why "retro" isn't always the best term for a "low-fi" game.]

Loren Schmidt's Independent Games Festival finalist Star Guard resembles an Atari 2600 game, but don't call it "retro."

The side-scrolling platform shooter is up for the Excellence In Design award for IGF 2010. It might appeal to a gamer's innate sense of nostalgia with its pixelated graphics, but from a design and artistic standpoint, creator Schmidt is living in the present.

Here, Schmidt explains why the term "retro game" makes him "uncomfortable," the inspirations for Star Guard, and expressing narrative within the confines of "low-fi."

What kind of background do you have making games?

My family didn't have a computer when I was younger, so I spent a lot of time playing with Lego, building castles out of blocks, and making up board games. I was always entranced with things that had moving parts or were interactive in some way.

I remember that when I was six or so, there was one block castle which I made over and over. It opened up and had a hidden slime pit inside. See, you'd put a little plastic knight right on the seam, and then you'd open it up and he'd fall into the slime pit below. The slime was made of green wooden blocks.

The first chance I had to make actual computer games was much later, in high school. And even then I didn't know how to program well. I was only allowed to take one elective, so I chose art instead of programming. I'm still playing catch-up in the code department.

What development tools did you use?

I used FlashDevelop to make Star Guard. I quite like it. If anyone out there is using Windows and is interested in Flash game development, I'd definitely recommend giving it a go.

There's also one tool which I really should have used, but didn't: an in-game level editor. Switching back and forth between an external editor and the game is unnecessarily awkward. In hindsight it would have been a really good idea to have taken a little time to make a simple real time editor for the game. I think it would have saved a lot of time and made level design a much more fluid process.

How long have you been working on the game?

About 16 months, though during that period I was only able to develop games part time due to school and other obligations.

How did you come up with the concept for the game?

What were its influences? I was making a large puzzle adventure game at the time. I didn't know how to organize myself, and though I still believed in the game, it wasn't going well. I had an urge to run away and make an extremely simple action game. I originally told myself it was just going to be a side project, but I had so much more fun developing Star Guard that it ended up becoming my main project. As influences, I'd list Another World, The Pit, Flywrench, Lode Runner, and Shotgun Ninja.

I'm not advocating abandoning projects- actually I think abandoning the other project was really unproductive and painful. I felt really guilty, and for the longest time I wouldn't admit to myself that I'd stopped development of the original game.

In hindsight, I think the problem was that I charged into making a large game too quickly. I was enthusiastic, but I didn't know how to develop a large project in a way that would stay fun and productive. (I'm still trying to improve my skills in that area.) I should have made one or two tiny games before beginning anything so large.

Why did you choose to go with such a retro-inspired style?

Personally, and this may sound strange coming from me, I feel rather uncomfortable with the word "retro." I'll try to explain where I'm coming from.

I feel that both high and low fidelity art can be effective, each in its own way. It's totally possible to make a stylish, self-consistent game in either category. Generally, I think working with higher fidelity assets allows a lot more freedom, and ultimately I think that's where most of our effort should go. But low fidelity art also has certain things to offer.

Firstly, I think that pixel art (and other restricted art styles) are a great fit for solo or small team game development. By working within constraints, it's possible to make a visually polished game without needing an army of specialists. Another thing that I like about pixel art is its cleanliness. It naturally encourages an even detail level, and it lends itself well to an uncluttered, readable style.

Low-fidelity art is also appealingly open to interpretation. If a character is only eight pixels tall, a large part of what we see is within our own imagination. Is he wearing a hat, or does he have a big nose? Are those tentacles or jointed legs? I played with that a lot in Star Guard. A lot of the art is deliberately ambiguous.

Why do you think the game was so successful in its design? IGF judges aren't the only ones to recognize the game for its tight design.

I haven't developed very many games, so if anyone else has a different way of going about things, by all means listen to them. I don't think there's a single right way to go about designing things.

So far I find it helps me to begin with a clear idea of the feel and activities I'd like to aim for. I try to start with a clean slate and develop the particulars with those goals in mind.

I think you end up with games that are more internally consistent when all the ingredients have been hand crafted to work well together, rather than borrowed wholesale from existing games and jury rigged to work together. You run into trouble when you assume a borrowed mechanic has the same role in an entirely new context.

Recharging health is a decent example of what I mean. Right now, a large number of action games have Halo-style recharging health. This kind of health system is a fairly good fit for cover based, stop and go firefights. It reinforces the feeling that cover is safe and taking the offensive is risky. Is someone shooting? Find cover. Is my health low? Find cover. There's also a fun risk/reward mechanic built in- it's possible to stay out in the open and keep dealing damage, but only if you can successfully dodge enemy fire for long enough to allow the shields to recharge. But while this mechanic works well in Halo, many of the other games that use it don't do so with as much attention to detail- they simply borrow the Halo system wholesale instead of creating a health system which is tailored to the game at hand.

Do you think the "retro" graphics could turn off potential players, or does that even concern you?

Definitely. It's hard to see a game that fits a preconceived category like that and not read a lot into it.

For instance, I think I harbor certain prejudices against Flash games: I'm probably inclined to assume they're rushed, have low quality standards, and contain tedious drawn out tutorials. It's really not fair at all, and I consciously try to be as objective as I can, but that's the prejudice I carry with me.

I think one of the burdens of choosing a low fidelity look is that some people assume the game is small, rushed, or all about evoking a particular era of history. Some people tend to dismiss the visual side of a game entirely if it's low fidelity. I hear statements like "it must be really refreshing to be able to spend so little time on visuals" or "this designer obviously chose to focus on design instead of art." The truth of the matter is that a lot of people who do low fidelity games are very visually focused. I spent a huge portion of the development time tweaking animation, adding special effects, and obsessively redrawing things, but it's not necessarily visible to people who aren't used to looking at crunchy low fidelity games from that perspective.

The narrative pulls you in too. Do you think people are surprised when such a minimalist game can create a compelling narrative? What's the key?

Personally, I think there are a lot of different effective ways of telling stories in games. Some games work perfectly with pages and pages of dialog, and others feel complete to me without any story at all. Both are right.

In this game, I want to use a pretty unobtrusive method of delivery. I want the story to reinforce the atmosphere of the game without impeding the act of playing it. Replay is a big part of what I'm going for here, and I also don't want to force the story on anyone who doesn't feel like reading it.

That's why the story is delivered through short messages on the walls. They're self-paced. It's possible to just run by them without pausing. It's also possible to stop and take them in at a slower pace if we prefer.

Another choice I'm making here is to tell the story in a fragmented way and leave a lot up to the imagination, rather than explicitly spell out all the details.

Were there any elements that you experimented with that just flat out didn't work with your vision?

Yes; for instance, I implemented (but did not use) a type of alien with a reflecting shield. I really like them, but they don't fit with the pace of the game well. They encourage a slower, more defensive style of play.

Also the structure of the game wasn't at all set in stone. The core ideas stayed- the feel, the general way combat works, the pace- but there were some other pretty large things about the game that gradually shifted over time. It wasn't a pure process of designing everything in detail, then executing it.

Have you played any of the other IGF finalists' games? Any games you particularly enjoyed?

I haven't had a chance to play most of the entries. I'm really looking forward to seeing them on the show floor.

The idea behind Miegakure is really appealing to me. (Meigakure involves the three dimensional projections of objects with more than three spatial dimensions.) I'm interested in seeing how well this implementation works. Can many people really model that sort of thing mentally, or do most people end up playing via guesswork? It's a neat idea, and I'm looking forward to seeing it in action.

What do you think of the current state of the indie scene?

It excites me that it's becoming easier and easier to make things. Tools like Game Maker, Construct, and MMF2 [Multimedia Fusion 2] are great, and I think that's only the tip of the iceberg. We still tend to make digital art like games in a very technical way, which is fine I think... but I think there's potential for other more expressive styles of creation too, things more analogous to performing a piece of music or drawing a picture. It's exciting to see new possibilities opening up.

I also want to say that I love how open and supportive the community is. It's really wonderful to see people teaching each other things, sharing techniques, and discussing ideas with each other. That's a constant source of inspiration for me.

[Previous 'Road To The IGF' interview subjects have included Enviro-Bear 2000 developer Justin Smith, Rocketbirds: Revolution's co-creators Sian Yue Tan and Teck Lee Tan, Vessel co-creator John Krajewski, Trauma creator Krystian Majewski, Super Meat Boy co-creators Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, Sidhe's Mario Wynands, who worked on Shatter, Daniel Benmergui, creator of Today I Die, and Klei Entertainment's Jamie Cheng, executive producer on Shank]

I have been thinking about the battle mini game after testing it a few times and trying a couple of things. I think that the beat 'em up idea does not fit with the Princess Maker type of experience I want to make. The game I am trying to make is more about thinking and thoughtful decitions, not about quick decitions like Diablo, so I am thinking about changing the direction I was taking and going towards something more like Monster Rancher or Pokemon type of gameplay. I still want to keep the way it looks though. The ability to see… Continue reading

UK-based indie studio Mode 7 Games are showing off a great-looking tactical strategy title called Frozen Synapse. The game's idea and mechanics look more than a little like Julian Gollop's Laser Squad series (the developer cites LS and X-Com as inspirations) but with an overhead view, which I don't really take issue for a couple reasons:

1. Laser Squad is awesome, and
2. There aren't nearly enough squad-based tactical strategy games coming out nowadays

If you're unfamiliar with Laser Squad, the essential concept is you have full control of a strike team, directing each member's movements and actions against an opposing group on a turn-by-turn basis. With each turn, you and your opponent plot out your moves, watch test scenarios based on those choices, and then watch both your team and the enemy team execute their orders.

Frozen Synapse is currently in its beta phase and is slated to release some time this year. You can follow its development on Mode 7's official site for the game.

[Via IndieGames]

UK-based creative agency Fluid Design posted another batch of media for its case study on Sega/Headstrong's The House of the Dead: Overkill, one of many video games the company has helped design packaging/advertising for. I previously featured some of the game's prototype boxes, logos, and T-shirts here.

Among the dozens of new images the firm uploaded are collages of grindhouse-style logos/movie posters that served as inspiration for Overkill's branding, early drafts of the comic included with game preorders, and more. Apparently, the resulting materials Fluid created was so well received, it was awarded "Best Press Kit" at Leipzig Games Convention. I had no idea that award even existed!

"Entrusted with total creative freedom, we began the project from scratch, with a focus on hand-drawn illustrations to create an authentic feel to the design content," says the firm. "The project called for a multilayered branding concept that took iconic 'grindhouse' aesthetics and created a contemporary feel for the game."

You can see all of the images on Fluid's Flickr set for The House of the Dead: Overkill.