Devlog #1: Beginnings

Hello followers! Welcome to devlog #1 of Nova Slash! I'll be discussing the game's story, inspiration, gameplay, and also showing off some visuals; though they're still works in progress.

Story

In Nova Slash, you play as Veil, a prisoner of world's mega country, Giaath. Many unethical and malicious practices and policies go on within its government in the name of science. Their scientist have recently discovered dust, gas, and other remnants in outer space close to our galaxy from a dead star, which was alive billions of years ago. They studied these remnants, as they were forming a star. Once the government was informed, it immediately contemplated ways of using stars as fuel and other discoveries; but more importantly for weapons on a cosmic scale. With this kind of power, their might would be absolute, and no one could touch them. After collecting these remnants (time skip I'll explain later), they created an artificial star to conduct experiments. This included manufacturing weapons and testing the effect of these weapons on prisoners, mainly ones serving life sentences. Veil, or his birth name Noven, was serving a life sentence for speaking out against the injustice and corruption amongst the political system in the mega city. He led a militia which fought back against the system, but was defeated and the militia disbanded. Noven was tortured under these experiments. During one a mechanical error took place and caused machinery to go haywire and the artificial star to collapse. Just before it did Noven's body began to absorb almost all the radiation from the star. When  the star collapsed everything within a 10-mile radius was obliterated. At the epicenter was Noven, now known as Veil, a newly freed man and ready for vengeance. There are many holes I need to fill for context, but it's the basic premise. 

Inspiration

I had this idea for a game way back in high school (I'm in my 30s now lol). I was thinking of creating an antihero like Batman or Kratos, and I was playing a lot of Assassin's Creed at the time so I wanted someone mysterious and incognito; more importantly he needed to wear a hood. I made a prototype of the game back in 2018, but I was too new to developing games and the mechanics I wanted to implement were too complex for me. In 2022, I released Nova Slash: Unparalleled Power on Steam, which didn't do well at all with sales. But after I worked with Nudge Nudge Games for 2 years, I realized a lot of errors I made from developing, testing, and most importantly marketing. So now I've got the motivation to use the Nova Slash title one more time!

The game will be a platformer roguelike elements. Here's some progress of completing Veil's move set. In the first photos I wasn't focused on modeling Veil yet. The game will be fast-paced fighting and you control the character by swiping  and pressing certain areas on your phone screen.

The visual look isn't there yet obviously, but here's some reference photos I was looking to use. I'm going for a futuristic city look.

That's it for now! Stay tuned for devlog #2!