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Wrack - an oldschool shooter

SiC-Disaster

Grizzled Veteran
Dec 16, 2005
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www.tangodown.nl
So this game is a bit unusual for me to post about but one of my friends is involved with making the game. Specifically, he is responsible for all the ingame art stuff, textures etc. and I did some playtesting for it as well :)

The game is currently being worked on by two guys and a third guy that works on it on and off. The guy in charge is responsible for Skulltag, a popular Doom mod that allowed for playing Doom on modern pc's, proper mouse support, online play etc.
Oh, and the soundtrack is being made by Bobby Prince, who made the Doom soundtrack as well.

Anyway, Wrack is an cel-shaded oldschool shooter in the style of the old Doom games meaning lots and lots of monster shooting, and it has boss fights in the style of Castlevania (though I never played that one, it's what I'm told haha).
It tries to have a nice mix of action, platforming etc. with monsters shooting projectiles that you will be able to dodge, melee-centred creatures etc.
There are some additional modes as well, like a Time-Challenge or a Treasure-hunt kind of thing.

Now, the game is not finished yet. There are about 4 maps available to play if you pre-order, but you do get a map editor and there are some custom maps in the works.
The game will be released in episodes, and the first one will have about 9 maps, with an additional two episodes currently planned. They want to introduce some new stuff every other map or so, be it either a weapon, a new style of map with different texture sets etc., an example of wich can be seen in the fourth map they added recently (the original pre-order launched with 3) which uses a different texture set, more yellow/reddish instead of the blue/greenish style of the first three maps.

Because the game is still a work in progress it's not only maps that are being added either. Currently they are working on getting a gibbing and gore system in for example, and previously they overhauled the lighting system.

At the moment there are four weapons but more are planned too. The current selection consists of a sword, a pistol, the classic shotgun and a machinegun that shoots orbs in an arc at the enemy.

Anyway, some screenshots:

wrack_07.png


wrack_03.png


wrack_08.png


wrack_09.png


wrack_01.png


The trailer is from an older build and doesn't have a lot of the recently released cool additions.

Wrack - Pre-order Release Trailer - YouTube

There are some playthroughs on youtube as well, this being one of them (though again, an older build with old lighting, no gibbing etc.):
Wrack (Alpha) Playthrough #1 - YouTube

Another one by TotalBiscuit is upcoming I've heard :)

The game can be pre-ordered for 9,95$, but it's regionally priced so us Euro's aren't being taken advantage of either :p

The official website is here:
http://www.wrackgame.com/
 
Now that looks bloody awesome!

The plan to go for episodic releases does worry me though, as it always does, because we've seen a lot of games fail to deliver with that model.

Regardless, i'm definately keeping my eye on this one, because it looks like a real return to the 90's shooter form, hell it looks like Doom and Quake2 had a bastard lovechild! :D
 
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And the TotalBiscuit video is online now too :)

► WTF Is... - Wrack ( Beta ) ? - YouTube



As far as episodic content goes, I happen to know that they've got most of it already lined out in terms of ideas/plans etc. Most likely those extra episodes are going to have to be paid for as well, but I think they have some cool ideas to innovate the game and make it worthwhile. At any rate, there is a map editor out for the community to play with and create maps of their own too, so should the game become popular there should be no shortage of maps at any rate.
It apparently functions similarly to the Doom editor, and the Doom community is STILL making maps for it. So should those guys hop over... :D
 
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Interesting blog post for those interested:
http://www.wrackgame.com/blog/2012/08/at-last-a-featured-map/

Wrack has a feature called 'featured maps', which is basically a selection of the best community-made maps. Up till now there wasn't a featured map yet, but now there is.
You can simply go into the game, go to New game and download the map straight from the game without hassle. So that brings the map count up to 5 now :)
 
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Figured I'd give this another update. They are working on a huge update, and in the recent past they have taken up making videoblogs talking about game design in general. Now there is a new video talking about the art direction, the first in a series of art-related video's.

The update is not out yet.
But in the video you can see quite a lot of new and different things going on, so I figured that was worth necro'ing this thread.
Some of the major additions are massive overhauls of the maps currently in the game (other map changes can be seen in other video's), but visually speaking there are a lot of new particles and such being added that are really adding to the visual atmosphere. Crates and barrels now have proper explosions and will leave behind debris. Also, new animations!

Example of the new gibbing blood:
963832_457006464393743_443455807_o.png


That and a lot more can be seen in this video:

Wrack VLOG #8 - Keeping It Stylish - YouTube
 
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