Dev Brief # 5 | New character designs and clothing system coming

For today’s developer update, we wanted to talk about our in-game characters.

To start off let’s go all the way back to who the game is about. War is looming in 1970’s Sweden and those that remain are people who have missed the last evacuation busses. These tend to be older men (many of them alcoholics) who would not even qualify to be in the army. Growing up in Boden, Sweden, many of us developers knew these kinds of men and they even scared us as kids. Everyone had that neighbour with a unique nickname and shady rumours attributed to them. We wanted to put the players in their shoes.

Have you ever had a creepy neighbour like this?

Our goal with Shattle was to create an environment where you can jump into a session and have a laugh with other players. At the same time, since they are based on real people we don’t want to make you forget about the characters or think they are a silly afterthought. Our initial character designs got us through the first initial hurdles, but it was always our goal to build off of them and create something better. Since the beginning of this year, we have been quietly working on polishing these characters. Now we’re ready to show some of our work off. Check out these before and after shots of 2 of them.

And before you ask, yes! We’re adding more ethnicities and women in future updates.

But that’s not all. We’re working on a new character selection system. Right now you always play as a randomly selected character from our list, but we’re planning on allowing you to choose your character from the main menu and customize them with clothing and accessories.

The clothing system that exists today, where you wear whatever clothes you can find, will soon disappear. Instead, we’re replacing it with a progression system. As you earn XP through matches you unlock new different outfits. As always we'll keep you in the loop as development continues.

-5 Fortress Dev Team

Steam post image