Pathway’s release is just around the corner! While there’s no date yet, the development is in its final moments and the game’s publisher Chucklefish (Wargroove, Stardew Valley) released a 10-minute gameplay video from the Wrath of God campaign (second of the five adventures you’ll be able to embark on in Pathway). So if you haven’t heard me rave about the next best turn-based tactical strategy game yet, the new footage shows exactly what we’ll soon be getting into.
Some of you know I’m on my March Indie Eurotrip right now. As a fan of everything pixel art+3D, I made it a special priority to stop in Hamelin, Germany, the home of Pathway developer Robotality. The company was founded by the Bachmann brothers in 2013, with their debut title Halfway coming out in July the following year. In fact, Halfway—as the name similarity hints—already featured quite some of the turn-based combat mechanics you’ll find in Pathway. Everything else is new in the follow-up however, whether it’s navigating a board-game-like map, random-generated story events and encounters, quicker pace designed around replayability, or Indiana Jones/Adventures of Tintin setting.
The crown jewel of course (at least for this blog) is the new graphics engine that supports dynamic 3D lighting with pixel-perfect art assets. I got a peek behind the scenes of the different tools and techniques that the guys use and it’s as clever and complex as I imagined it would be. There are multiple tools and modes that deal with embedding the 3D information into 2D pixel art sprites, from voxel and low-poly 3D-geometry bases (manually pixeled on top with perfect control over texture and details), to ground contours that project the bottoms of the sprites to correct depth for perfect shadow positioning. Perhaps the most surprising part was that almost every scene object eventually ends up converted to pure, untextured polygons (as in, there’s almost no trace of the source pixel art textures in the game at all, pixel clusters get triangulated into different-colored polygon meshes).
Getting my hands on the gameplay was just as satisfying as nerding about the art production pipeline, even if I annoyed the developers by taking my sweet-ass time staring at each location more than actually playing the game. (I have no regrets!)
It’s obvious that I’m head over heels for what Robotality has in store for us. So far I can only say that the game will be out in the first half of this year, but that’s plenty to be excited about. Until then, watching the 10-minute video posted above should help to keep the flames of 3D+pixel art glowing bright.
