DARE2022: Mankind's March - Out Now on itch.io
'Mankind’s March is a turn based tactics horror experience set in space. The dynamic terrain allows your squad to shape the combat space turn after turn using abilities, resulting in unique and unpredictable scenarios that reflect your playstyle. The world is unstable and there never will be stable ground below you, if you want to survive you'll need to keep fighting.'
Out Now: https://hawthorn-games.itch.io/mankinds-march and follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GamesHawthorn
The game was presented at EGX on behalf of DARE Academy 2022, which we attended as Finalists and won the Runner-Up prize. We received a lot of positive feedback at EGX, such as:
'And I really enjoyed @GamesHawthorn's Mankind's March - an interesting twist on turn-based tactics with a dynamic map, cool character roster and bonus space-dog 🪐🐕' - Luke Hebblethwaite, Head of Games at BAFTAGames.
'Wasn’t it amazing!? So much smart going on. Can’t get it out my head. I so want to play more of Mankind’s March!' - Will Freeman, Freelance Games Journalist for the Guardian, Edge, BAFTA, BBC, PC Gamer, NME etc.
'Awesome game made by a group of awesome people' - Ohle Mathiebe, Art Director at Wardog Studios.
'Out of all the games at @EGX, I’d say this one is a win for me! Art style, gameplay and crew at the booth just amazing!' - Quantum Caza, Indie Content Creator.
I was a 2D generalist on this indie dev Team, I mainly worked on the 2D environment sprites you can find our game as well as the UI design and implementation. I was brought onto the team later on, Nicola Dau asked me join to help the team with their visual art direction and as an artist. Nicola and I worked previously on an older amateur project, and our team thrived due to our chemistry and cooperation.
Hawthrone Games Members:
Nicola Dau - Lead Game Designer, Producer and Programmer.
Caitlin Wilson - 2D Generalist.
Abraham Aditya - Sound Design.
Andrea Minucci - Lead Programmer.
Michael Hutchison - Game Designer.
Natan Walentin-Konieczny - Technical Designer and Programmer.
Lili Wissenbach - 2D Generalist and UI.
Originally, the game was a 2D isometric platform game. I was tasked with the UI design and did some sketches.
UI 'in action'.
Early on I also did some quick concept art for Environment Props.
We then decided to take a huge change in the art direction, by putting the game into a 3D world, in a screen. I mocked up some sketches of how this set up would've looked.
However, we did not have 3D artist on the team. Our solution was to create 2D assets, and using height maps and normal maps to give them more depth and immersion in our 3D world. This gave our game a unique visual design and direction.
I made Modular 2D assets of walls, the main screen asset, keyboard asset amongst many others.
Still in charge of the UI, I made some concept art mock ups for the starting screen.
UI Concept Art.
UI Concept Art.
We then made all the UI in Godot itself, I provided my teammate with the shapes for all the boxes, and we followed those into engine to make them 'buttons' and interactive.
In-game screenshot.
In-game screenshot.
In-game screenshot.