Right then. It’s been almost exactly a year since the last post on here, which is a bit embarrassing, so let’s fix that.
Before anyone panics, Drone Armada is still very much alive and still being worked on. But for the last few months a second project has been quietly taking over our evenings, and it’s got to the point where it deserves its own corner of the site.
Master Sculptor – Chisel and Stone
It’s a game about carving sculptures out of stone. Properly carving them. You don’t pick a statue from a menu and watch a bar fill up. You stand in front of a block of marble with a mallet and a chisel and you take stone away, one strike at a time, until whatever was hiding in there comes out.
Take too much off and it’s gone. Stone doesn’t really do undo. (We’ll see how long that rule survives contact with playtesters.)
Who are you?
You play Matteo, an otter in a green beanie and an apron that’s seen better days, setting up a small sculpting studio in Renaissance Italy. He isn’t famous. Nobody in town has heard of him yet, and that’s sort of the point.
People bring you work. Some of it is perfectly sensible: a vase, a doorstop, a plinth for somebody’s garden. Some of it isn’t. There’s a farmer who would very much like a statue of his prize turnip, and we haven’t had the heart to tell him no.
Why stone?
Partly because we wanted something slower. Drone Armada is hundreds of units and things going bang, and after a long stretch of that it’s nice to work on something where the most dramatic event of the day is a corner falling off.
And partly because there’s something very calming about watching a block slowly turn into a shape. It isn’t fast and it isn’t flashy. It’s just steady, and every strike gets you a tiny bit closer.
The feel we’re going for
Cosy, mostly. Warm light, a quiet studio, a bit of music, a cup of tea within reach. It should be the kind of game you put on in the evening to unwind, rather than one that makes your palms sweat. There will be some challenge in it, because a sculpture you didn’t have to work for isn’t very satisfying, but it isn’t a reflex test.
Where it’s at
Early. Really early. Most of what exists so far is engine work and a couple of test scenes, and nearly everything in these screenshots will change. The tech has eaten most of the time: making stone you can hit anywhere, at any angle, that still looks like solid stone afterwards turned out to be a fairly big job. The next post is all about that, for anyone who likes the nerdy stuff.
But it’s at the point where hitting the stone feels good, and that felt like the right moment to start talking about it. We’ll post here as it comes together. Probably not every week, but often enough to follow along.
Cheers,
Alistair
Acryptum Games Founder