Underworld Ascendant Unveils Bestiary and Staff Members

The latest update on Underworld Ascendant’s official website includes some detail of the game’s showing at the Boston Festival of Indie Games, but what interests us the most is the fact that it also includes some insight into the work that goes into the title’s monster roster and also gives us some more information on the staff.

Apparently, all actors in Underworld Ascendant are grouped into three categories, depending on how robust their AI routine is and what role they perform game-wise:

When you interact with a denizen of The Stygian Abyss in Underworld Ascendant, you’re encountering many hours of work involved in bringing it to life… Modeling, animation, AI, and — what we’ll cover a bit today — a core set of underlying design principles that dictate its role in the game.

The inhabitants come in three main forms:

• CATALYSTS – Beings who possess robust behaviors, advanced combat tactics, and, if intelligent, can converse, trade, or engage with the player. (Ex: The Lizard Men.)
• CONFOUNDERS – Creatures who enhance or detract in combat, like The Wailing Haunt or Lich, or act as environmental hazards, like The Ripper or Lurker.
• COLLABORATORS – Inhabitants with useful behaviors that the player can exploit, like the Earth Clot, a bulky, gelatinous mass that can be prodded down hallways to break traps or act as cover.

Creatures are also classified based on their tier internally, so that they can eventually ramp up in difficulty after players have actually learned their patterns and mechanics, and apparently creatures from the various different tiers will be included in the upcoming vertical slice build.

There’s also a look at a couple of new additions that will bolster the team’s programming and art departments:

CHRIS MAIRE – A programmer with a background on AAA and indie games (including his own Gravity Wolf and more), Chris combines hard-fought wisdom and can-do spirit. He’s an active member of the local Boston game community and an aficionado of metal.

CARL AHLUND – As the Design Director of Underworld Overlord, our “be-the-bad-guy” dungeon management game for the Google Daydream mobile VR platform, Carl works with our external mobile developers to define the player experience, tune the fun of each level, and balance the game’s ramping difficulty.