Game development log #2 : THE STORY

Welcome to another chapter on our dev log! This time we will be talking about the story and the characters.

Historically most Shoot em’ up games don’t have a story, its roots are in the arcade, and on arcades you don’t have time to spend on a game story. In the best cases, you were awarded with a still image and a little text at the end. Today, thankfully we can play at our homes without someone waiting in line for us to finish our game, and that gives the developers the opportunity to include a story to give some sense to what you are doing. Is that good? Bad? Depends on the player, but we like some introduction to the world and a little story to get involved in the game.

The story

Rising Sun takes place around 1947 in a fictionary ww2 post war. The idea was to take some real life events and make it part of the story. The game puts you in the skin of four different pilots before and after being in the Valkyrias squadron following the path of Albert Hessler to stop his plans. In your journey you will confront all of Hessler’s commanders to stop them, and in the process learn the truth and their real motives.

As a resume:

We have Albert Hessler an ex-commander now aimed at gather ex combatants to create the mercenary unit “skulls”.

In response to this, the United Nations, trough the SDU (Special Defense Unit), creates the valkyrias to fight Skulls

The valkyias are a squad made up of elite pilots, Commanded by Anna Baudin. A french pilot.

The Characters

For most of the characters we took some real life people for reference, actors, friends… but always having in mind that we want that the aesthetics also reflect the way of behaving and make simpler what it represents for the player.

The Valkyria squadron

The valkyries were divine entities that served odin. Their purpose was to choose the most heroic of those fallen in battle and take them to Valhalla. With that in mind, we wanted to represent that idea with these characters.

The Skull squadron

Hessler and his commanders. Each of them is in charge of a different branch of their army, air, sea, land and weapons development. All of them are connected on way or another with the valkyria squadron and the story between them will unfold as you progress through the game.

Hope you enjoyed this small story introduction!

Next time we will be covering some gameplay with the game system.

See you soon pilots!

MoebiusOne Team