As you might know, Variant is still a pretty small company, so purchases in the store help us fund the game development that we crave to bring you! Please take a moment and look around the store, and if there’s something you like, we’d sure appreciate your business.

As before, we are working with our friends at CafePress to bring you all this great stuff, so if you like what we have to offer, you might also consider taking a look at what else is out there as well. In advance, we thank you for shopping and we know you’ll love what you get!

We are doing our best to be available to you, so we’re doing our best to be everywhere you want to be. Is there somewhere that you’d like to connect with us? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll do our best to link in with you!

Hey friends, welcome back to our development diary. We’re excited because this week we closed out alpha development. The game is feature complete – in other words, everything that we plan on putting into the game is in the game.

There is some building and construction work to do, though in a game that randomly generates its ‘dungeon’, there’s not as much to do as there might otherwise be. That doesn’t mean we can kick back with a cold glass of something tasty and enjoy the summer yet! We still need to script out all the events that could occur, and load the game up with all the fun loot that we’ve devised over the last  year. However, we will be getting the game into beta testers’ hands soon, and that’ll be good times.

We’re actually behind a little on where we thought we’d be, because we took some time to rework our concept of the game’s controls! During a recent demonstration with our friends in the IGDA’s Detroit chapter, we got a lot of great feedback, but the biggest thing was that nobody liked how the game controlled. So we went back to the drawing board and devised what we believe is a better system – as well as the ability to choose what kind of control scheme you like best! If you like our original concept, like we do, you’ll be able to use it. If you want to use the revised control scheme, that’ll be available to you. And if you want to use a virtual D-pad instead, you can do that too.

Hey, we’re nothing if not flexible.

The big thing I want to introduce to you guys today, is the last key feature in the game. Right now we’re calling it the Ghost Swap mode, though it’s deeper than what it sounds like. Here’s how it works.

Legends of Phantastica: The Clockwork Tower is a roguelike – and as it happens, you are probably going to die at least once or twice. Sorry, it’s part of the challenge! But when you die, your character isn’t lost to the either! He or she can pass into the afterlife on our servers, and we will store your character’s name, stats, equipment and even some last words of your choosing. We’ll even try to determine what kind of alignment you’ve played as, whether you’re nice or kind of a jerk, and store that data too. Now, when someone else is playing the game, they might come across your ghost – and it may be helpful, or it might become another obstacle in their quest to unravel the secrets of the tower.

One special aspect of this, is that a friendly ghost can join up with your character, and you can switch back and forth between your character and the ghost that you’ve met. That way, an errant brawler in need of some magic defense (or offense!) can team up with a powerful ghostly mage, and use her abilities to topple some areas that would normally be a challenge for him!

It’s great fun, and a neat way to play with other players and their characters. We can’t wait for you to try it out and let us know what you think!

We’ve started out by teaming up with our pals at MochiMedia to provide you with pages and pages of some of the best and most intense online games on the planet, with more to come each month! Be sure to check back on a regular basis, because there’ll always be something new and fun to play at Variant On!

First up, Legends of Phantastica: The Clockwork Tower went feature complete this week! That means we’re several steps closer to wrapping it up! There are a few things we need to lay out before we launch into beta, but soon the game will be in the hands of our beta testers and then come the floggings. I suppose we shouldn’t be as excited about floggings, but it’s the price of progress.

Speaking of beta testing, did you sign up to be a beta tester? If you’re interested in playing our game and sending us nasty emails about it, then we’d like to hear from you! Of course, you don’t have to be nasty about it, we’re just open minded.

Here’s the other fun bit, we are ready today to unveil the full cast of playable classes in the game!

Some of them you already know. If you’ve been reading our development diaries in the past, then you’re already acquainted with the Thief, Brawler, Gunslinger and the lovely Mage.

However,the remaining two classes you’ve yet to see to are the Undertaker and the Librarian! Today, they are officially part of Legends of Phantastica!

Now, you may have met the Librarian in a previous development diary, but certainly you’ve yet to be formally introduced. That might get your gears turning. Why does the Librarian look so different from when she was first made public?

That’s a very good question.

As you might recall, we’d originally taken the opportunity to work with a group of talented Thai pixel artists. It’s pretty clear that they knew their stuff, and their propensity to take creative liberty with the concepts they were given lead to some interesting developments. However, we soon realized that their working situation – which we’ve noted in the past – wasn’t going to get the job done anytime soon, so we have parted ways with them for the project.

That left us with a whole bunch of player characters and no sprite artist to do them! Eventually we found Raf Domingos, whose work you saw when we introduced the Gunslinger in Development Diary #4, but we needed even more firepower. Eventually we found Ramon Rabang and his wife, a dynamic duo calling themselves Dereka and holy cow are they awesome! They took the original thief sprite and upgraded him, juiced up Raf’s work on the Gunslinger, and powered out the rest of the player character cast utilizing Phil’s original designs in record time. Really, it’s been astounding working with these guys, and we can’t wait to do more projects with them.

But enough about that – we’ve spent five development diary entries talking about business and technical aspects of development, why don’t we talk about the game today? In the spirit of unveiling the cast of player classes, let’s get into a little more detail on what makes these characters tick.

Mage
The Mage is a fun-loving, charming and sultry enchantress specializing in elementalism. In the world of Phantastica, many adventurers have an affinity for various “suits,” categories into which the various cards which most magic is derived from are divided, and the Mage is strong with the Tides. Being strong in the Tides, she is especially skilled in direct damage, wielding magic of various elements against one another to crush her foes. As your stereotypical magic-user, she is not so great when it comes to taking the fight up close and personal, but with her talents, the only time you’ll get close to the Mage is if she lets you!

Her favorite food is strawberries.

Gunslinger
Quick-witted and tomboyish, the Gunslinger has long lived for adventure and excitement. She travels the world of Phantastica seeking out new experiences wherever she can find them. She has a strong sense of justice, and finds herself caught up in all kinds of situations whenever she arrives in a new destination. True to her profession, she is innately tied to the suit of the Gun, which augments and focuses her physical damage and accuracy to superhuman levels.

When she’s not out fortune hunting or righting wrongs, the Gunslinger likes to play the flute.

Brawler
A member of the Hakana tribe, the Brawler and his ancestors have lived on the same land for generations. When the Clockwork Tower appeared, he was chosen as a representative of his people to investigate it. His deep spiritual nature and connection to the land makes him an ideal adept for the suit of the Earth, which grants him abilities to protect himself and others when necessary, summoning the very rock of the planet for his armor. He is skilled in utilizing nearly any melee weapon, and can take the fight to the enemy without a moment’s hesitation.

Since he was a child, the Brawler has enjoyed painting.

Thief
The Thief lives by his wits and agility. While he does have a tendency to appropriate loot that might not necessarily belong to him, he is not always happy with being called a ‘Thief’ and prefers the more benign term of ‘Treasure Hunter.’ Because of his experiences and keen reflexes, the Thief can navigate any terrain and spot any trap, or move silently to avoid alerting roaming monsters of his presence. When he puts his mind to it, the Thief can be almost invisible! Quick as the wind, the Thief has an affinity with the suit of the Air, which not only increases his agility even further, but enables him to indirectly attack his foes by manipulating objects with gusts of wind.

For the most part, the Thief wears his goggles because he thinks they look cool.

Librarian
A shy, reserved girl, the Librarian maintains the nearby town’s book repository. Having heard the rumor that the Clockwork Tower contains a myriad of historical artifacts and lost tomes, she decides to set out and see what she can find. Being as well-read as she is, the Librarian is tide to the suit of Words, which lend her several abilities including the ability to soothe and heal, and identify items that she finds. She isn’t very great in a fight however, and prefers to keep her distance whenever possible.

The chopsticks in her hair were a gift from a traveling trader from a faraway land, whom she hopes to one day meet again.

Undertaker
The Undertaker manages the town graveyard, and is responsible for its citizens’ final journeys. Because of her job, she is not a popular citizen, even though people realize hers is a necessary job. When the town held a meeting to determine who would investigate the Clockwork Tower, she quickly volunteered, in the hopes that her neighbors would see her as more than just the person who buries their families. Her constant contact with death has given her tremendous control over the dark suit of Omens, which lets her manipulate the very forces of life. She can steal vitality from her enemies, cause their strength to wither and even summon allies from the beyond.

Ultimately, the Undertaker just wants to make a friend.

So that’s that! We hope you enjoyed getting to know a little bit more about the characters you’ll have available in Legends of Phantastica: The Clockwork Tower. Did you know – they’ll all be available in the game at launch? None of them are downloadable content, in-app purchases or pending updates. Each character will be ready for you as soon as you buy the game! We believe that if you’re going to buy a game, you should get all of it. We’re not going to nickel and dime you, by breaking it into pieces.

Which character sounds like the most fun for you? How do you normally play adventure games? Let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear what you think!

Until next time, thanks for stopping by!

How about it, friend? Are you game?

There are a couple caveats:

• You must be 18 or older
• You need an iOS device, that is, iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

That’s it! If you wanna come play with us early, click here and fill out the application! We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Plus, there’re still two more character classes to be revealed. What might they be?

Without throwing anybody under the bus, we’ve gone through some unfortunate staffing issues over the last several months in some particularly crucial areas of content development. Turns out we had a lesson to learn when it comes to hiring some folks, but with that lesson learned and some amazing new team members on the roster, we are back in action!

Speaking of new team members, here is the latest playable character in the game, the Brawler.

The Brawler is a member of a native tribe, local to the region in which the Clockwork Tower has appeared. Trained from a young age to be a tracker and a warrior, the Brawler has a keen survival instinct and tremendous physical strength.

He’s not all brawn, though. Thanks to his people’s intimate connection to the land, and his own connections to the spirits of his ancestors, he can summon powerful Earth magic to his cause, as he makes his ascent through the tower.

Now you may recall from our previous development diary, that the methodology in creating our characters for this game has involved a good bit of back-and-forth between Phil and Raf to create the Gunslinger.

Not so, in the case of the Brawler! This character was realized in one take, so to speak. Phil knocked the concept out, and our new sprite artist, Ramon Rabang, nailed the sprite work down in less than a day. That’s right – less than a DAY. This guy’s FAST, and we’re super fortunate to have found him!

Of course, with a character like the Brawler, there’s a lot of detail that can get lost in the translation to sprite form. In the old days, features like that half-sarong simply wouldn’t work, because computers and game consoles worked with pretty limited memory, and so they’d simply flip a sprite instead of illustrating and animating two distinct sides of a character.

Today, we aren’t bound by those limitations and thus, those kinds of unique details can get into a character without issue.

With that said, here’s the Brawler in his in-game incarnation! You can see that the thick hand wraps, arm band and half sarong all show up cleanly and clearly, and we don’t actually sacrifice anything in terms of fidelity between the concept and the final sprite, which is a testament to Ramon’s skills!

Of course, we’ve told you about the skills that the Brawler has when it comes to dispatching the creatures that inhabit the Clockwork Tower. But all those talents are useless if there are no monsters to use them on, right? So we’ll close out today with a look at a few of the monsters you’ll be brawling with in The Clockwork Tower, as designed and animated by our good friend Conrad Schmidt.

Enjoy, and we’ll see you next time!

We know the wait’s been longer than it should, and trust us – nobody wants this game launched more than we do! We hope that you’ll agree with us that the end result will be worth the wait.

When developing characters, we always start with a concept. What are we looking to accomplish with the character and how does he or she fit into the game? It’s important to remember that before anything else, we are making a game and thus there are rules that everything has to abide by. What can a player do? How do they do it? That sort of thing.

In this case, Legends of Phantastica is a dungeon-crawler, a roguelike. So we expect players to navigate our dungeon mazes hunting for treasure, evading traps, fighting monsters and so forth. We also want to give players the chance to experience the game in different ways, so settled on multiple character classes, each behaving in different ways. There is the straightforward path, where players just brute force their way through the challenges before them, there is the circuitous route where players rely on magic or skills to get by, and then there are the in-betweens. One of these approaches, for instance, would be to attempt force but minimize contact, that is, handle things from a difference. And within our fiction, which is something we’ll touch more on later, the most logical concept for a character would be a pistolero, or as we know her, a Gunslinger.

The Gunslinger, as first drafted

From that point we come to deciding the character’s look. Here at Variant we like our hero characters to be diverse, both in their traits but also in their expectations. When you think of western settings and you think of the gun fighter trope, most people think of the Clint Eastwood or John Wayne rough-and-tumble sort of character. We decided to go a different direction and draw upon other figures, like Annie Oakley.

Indeed, in our development bible the entry for the Gunslinger describes her as “a sassy, Annie Oakley type with red hair in a long braid. Not so great up close and personal, but she can handle herself in a fight. Clad in a beige leather duster, tight blouse, practical brown pants and black flat-brimmed hat, her gun skills are without equal. Suitable to her profession, she wields cards of the Gun suit with added authority.”

That’s actually the entire entry as regards her appearance.

You might be asking, “Well how come? Why don’t designers be more specific when it comes to her look? That way the artists know what they should be putting together!” To an extent that’s true, but we think it’s important to get our team members involved in the creative process as much as possible. This way everybody gets to have the same ownership stake in the project, and plus, it’s more fun that way!

To the left you can see artist Phil Manning’s first take on the Gunslinger. (To see sprite artist Raf Domingos’ take on the Gunslinger concept, click here!) Immediately you can see that he’s taken some liberties with the character description, going from a standard leather duster and fedora to a ranger’s hat and green overcoat. He also added a little bit of sex appeal with the bared midriff, and the belt bands and medallion add some flair to what would otherwise be a pretty dull design! What’s especially interesting is that she looks so very, very innocent in this picture. Her calm demeanor and doey eyes almost convey a different type of character than that you’d expect from a trained shooter – perhaps too much so.

So we sat down with Phil and went over these concerns, and he went back to the drawing board: Literally.

Meanwhile, the design team spent time on her abilities. What, really, is the Gunslinger capable of? Pinpoint accuracy with a firearm, no doubt. But what else? We did specify that she’s not so great up close, so it’s okay that she’s got those skinny arms and legs. She might be able to take care of herself, but she won’t be picking any fights in the saloon anytime soon. Also, she might be a gunfighter, but she’s an adventurer too. She’d have to be ready for anything, and maybe a big heavy coat might restrict her movement? It’s possible that it might afford the protection she needs to get by.

After a few more revisions, Phil came back with a new draft for our Gunslinger gal.

The Gunslinger, as she appears today

The differences are subtle, but they’re there. Her coat is now clearly a leather duster, which would indeed provide her protection from the elements as an adventurer. Her hat is a more stylish cowgirl hat, and her colors contrast more, making them really pop. Even her expression is changed, now a little more sassy, a little more world-aware. This was the Gunslinger we were looking for.

Once approved, we sent the concept work on to our character sprite artist Raf Domingos. His job involves translating Phil’s concept work into game sprites, which is no easy task when you consider all the detail in Phil’s artwork!

The trick is to seize on the key details and work down from there.

Raf builds his character sprites off a standardized mannequin, adding in the details and designs that bring the character to life. Here, the obvious pieces are the hat and coat, and the tied-off blouse, from which the rest of the sprite gets built, according to Raf.

After he gets to work, we check and recheck to make sure the sprite fits within the boundaries she needs to fit within – for example, on the iPad she needs to fit within 128×128 pixels. And as he works on and finishes up the Gunslinger, we start the process all over again with the next character!

Stay tuned for the next installment, friends. Next time we’ll look at another character, the Brawler, as well as some of the creepy crawlers that infest the Clockwork Tower. Thanks for stopping by!