Thread by @DevSalvatrix

In 2007/2008, I was lead designer on a Superman game that was never released - because the economy crashed hard. It killed our publisher, our studio (Factor 5), and the game.

I have multiple unreleased games through my career, but THIS is the only one I mourn to this day...

The goal was to present super brawls as they were seen in the cartoons and comics. JLU was our main touchstone. We put together this fast video montage to show what everything we wanted to have as gameplay. And we DID IT.

Aerial brawling, large urban environments, crashing through buildings, fast target engagement, knocking your foe into the next block, shockwaves from hits, impact grooves in the streets or building sides… all of it.

We hadn’t seen a game really deliver on that promise before, and to be honest I have yet to see it delivered fully since. We had it fully working as a prototype and were shifting to full production when the crash hit. All the main gameplay was in place and had been proven out.

We also didn’t want to rely on traditional gaming crutches of the IP – kryptonite and fighting robots. There were rules about the big blue boy scout (pre-Snyder obviously), but we were to surround Supes with foes more in his power range.

So I still am sad for what could have been. This was supposed to release alongside the sequel to the Bryan Singer Superman Returns film (which also clearly never happened). Not being able to see this through to release remains the biggest regret of my career.

Anyway, the above 2 videos were touchstone reference that we made early in prepro to communicate to the team and to the stakeholders (DC/WB/Legendary/Brash) where we intended to take the game.

If there is interest, I may dig up some related materials from my archives later.

While the gameplay may have been based on JLU, the environments were based heavily on both the Superman animated series and early 20th century artist Hugh Ferriss - featuring elevated highways, railways, and airships.

In addition to us just appreciating the visual aesthetic (and that is worked with the animated series style), the layers of motion at every elevation in the city created a city that felt alive no matter where you were - important in a game where much takes place in the air.

Everything here is blocky - by intent.

For prototyping, we were establishing playable spaces, activity levels, core functionality, etc.

When the art is more refined, too much feedback starts to focus on the art. "Ugly" art helps keep the focus on where it is needed early on.

Just for fun, here is some of the art explorations that were done as well...

#gamedevelopment
#gamedesign

And... I am just kind of jumping around now.

In the previous cityscape, it might be noticed in addition to vehicles for a sense of of motion, they were also usable props in combat. As were roof and street level details.

(The second image showed what we wanted to avoid.)

More concept art - characters:
Parademon
Brimstone
Darkseid
Livewire

(Note, I am not the artist of any of the concept art. I was a game designer focused on gameplay vision and elements.)

And videos! This was our first playable prototype during pre-production. Obviously art is still placeholder, though more polished assets are starting to get swapped in such as Supes and Zod.

But it shows brawling while crashing through offices!

And this is a target render from pre-production.

The point of the target render is to demonstrate what the intended gameplay might look like in a more art-finished state.

#gamedevelopment
#bluesteel

Adding a late addendum to these tweets to mention a few things I have seen around discussions of this game...

Our game was not going to be an open world game. I know Unseen64 from 2016 described it as such in 2016, but I am unsure where that came from.

While our engine could (and did) support REALLY large spaces (100-120 city blocks were no prob), we decided smaller set pieces (20-25 blocks +/-) worked better for gameplay.

So each episode arc would take place on a series of these smaller maps, with notable landmarks in each.

We were also not planning on limiting play to Metropolis. We had major arcs planned in Metropolis (of course), but also on Apokolips. And we were were at least planning on some maps for ruins of Krypton, Fortress of Solitude, and Smallville.