A Look Behind the Scenes of the Creation of 'Sometime Man's Journey', Launching this Thursday

The long and winding, ahem, journey of Old Man's Journeying, which we've been following for the past twelvemonth, finally comes to an end when the game hits the App Store this Thursday. This story-driven adventure has you traveling across beautifully-illustrated lands interacting with the environment and recalling the memories of the old man protagonist'southward life. While its main purpose is telling an emotional tale about reflection and redemption, the gameplay in Erstwhile Human being'southward Journey involves an interesting mechanic that lets you literally move mountains equally you lot manipulate the elevations in various depths of the environment to make a articulate path forward for the old man. In case you aren't familiar with Old Man's Journey at all, check out the gameplay trailer below to run across it in action.

That unique landscape moving mechanic actually caught my attention when I was showtime shown a very early on version of the game during GDC 2016, and with Former Human's Journey just almost to launch developer Broken Rules has sent along a ton of neat behind the scenes information about the development and development of the game. First off is some footage of the first playable prototype of the landscape moving mechanic back when it was simply a neat thought with pretty much no visuals or story to continue with information technology. Despite how crude it may expect in this video, it actually looks quite similar to the finished product mechanically and information technology's smashing to meet such a unique idea being realized.

Next they had to determine what sort of fine art style to use to build around that absurd mechanic they'd adult. Here are three dissimilar looks at some concept art of the same level, 1 in sketchbook style, and so the same scene colored in, and finally that same scene once more washed in a more smoothed out and stylized look.

The concluding fine art style concluded upwards not being exactly like any of these options, just it probably almost closely resembles the second style. But another slice of concept art that was sent along shows an additional scene in the smoothed out, '90s-way 3D graphics of that tertiary example above, and could you imagine if this is how the entirety of Old Man's Journeying looked?

Information technology has a certain charm, but I'm sure glad they went with the more illustrated look in the stop. One other interesting thought they were considering for the game was doing bodily 3D visuals for things similar the buildings and even the vehicles. This would have given the game sort of a 2.5D wait, which could have been quite cool just besides still doesn't seem similar every bit good a fit as the concluding style they went with.

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Information technology definitely would have been cracking to have those 3D elements giving depth to the landscapes, simply I also remember it would have taken away from the storybook vibe of the game. Talking near depth though brings me to my adjacent set of cool behind the scenes stuff. The landscapes in Old Man'south Journey are fabricated upward of many layers which can give a feeling of depth past using parallax scrolling and also is pretty of import for the mural-sliding mechanics. Well, when you zoom out a bit from a finished level and view information technology in the team's level editor, you can become a not bad sense of just how many layers at that place are that make upwardly each surround. Check these out.

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I especially dearest that top one where the view zooms out and reveals just how tall and complex the level really is. Next up is several looks at how a level evolves from concept images into a terminal production. In this example it's the watermill level which starts out as a sketch, then has the old man's movement points roughed in, then is painted out before having finishing touches like shadows and details added into the final image. The images are brusk and wide and then feel free to click them for a larger view.

Here's a like look at the hotel level as information technology goes from sketch, to painted, to detailed, to gorgeous last product. As with the images above, these images are somewhat tiny and then experience gratuitous to click on whatsoever of them to get the larger version. Also, I didn't include this because it was a bit awkward to actually embed in this mail due to its dimensions, but if you lot want to see this process animated together then bank check out this gif.

This side by side example was a bit of a friendlier size for embedding, so I've gone ahead and embedded it below. It's a actually cool expect at how all the elements comes together, so check out this animation of the evolution of the level titled The Dive.

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Well, that nearly wraps it up for our petty journey (no I do not become tired of using that joke) into the creation of Old Man's Journey. I absolutely love this sort of behind the scenes stuff well-nigh how a game is made, and specially beingness able to see very early concept stuff and and so be able to compare it to the super-polished finished products. I hope you lot also enjoyed peeking behind the pall of this game, and hopefully plenty of people will exist picking up Old Man's Journeying when it launches this Thursday and will have an even greater appreciation into the kind of work and techniques that went into its creation.