I'm not sure what they're yelling about but it sounds exciting.

"If you have the drip, it means you have swagger, especially in how you look. You're hot. You're cool. You're on point. You've got the sauce!"

We recently implemented a customisable game rule set for the battle mode. Soccer mode is in the works and almost ready!

The biggest questions we get during our play testing sessions are: What am I trying to do? and why am I trying to do it?
We hope our first public marketing trailer can address those questions in a cute and funny way which also addresses the style and humour of the product. We're pushing very hard to get this trailer finished and polished weeks in advance before Gamescom 2022

The trailer, in summary, will involve an orc presenting a bunch of flowers to a lady orc which he wants to impress. It's then imminently made clear to the orc (and viewer) that the lovely lady is only impressed by SPACE ORCS BRAWL victory trophies! Queue montage of the orc getting ready to battle it out by putting on pilot goggles and leaping into one of the space ships followed by 30 seconds of game-play footage.

Thanks to IGEA and Screenwest we will be attending Gamescom in Cologne, Germany this August!

Where might this idea have come from? We may never know... :)

These little guys will be seen in the cut scenes working on their ships, with coloured work clothes to match their team!

Rig & skinning complete and the test animations are looking pretty promising, textures are only place holder for skinning sake.

Animation coming along, currently 75 joints and 7390 triangle for the LOD1 @ 3 influences per joint. Will be making use of LODs a lot for the crowds as well as reducing skinned vertex influences at a distance. Currently no plans for requiring IK for the feet at this stage either!

All we need now is a nicer background and an illustrator to do a paint over on a render to make our first marketing key art!

WIP of the new Orc style, to suit the target audience of the game we're trying to make them cute and slap-stick!

Some concept sketches to go off. Though we're trying out a more narrow jaw in 3d

We applied for, and successfully received access to Nintendo Switch development! So it's full steam ahead for a PC and Switch release in 2023!

In preparation for taking on more art staff, Josiah has started creating a huge backlog of concept art to work from & to flesh out the upcoming game modes and environments 

Seems to be working!

Going all out with some ability implementations that we've been dying to add in!

A shield that protects you and releases a explosion of energy

The terrifying 500 cal! Super fast, Super effective!

A rapid fire shot, useful in offensive and defensive scenarios.

After 3 and a bit months in development, we finally have a way to reward the player for their fighting prowess. A victory screen!

This screen has received its share of iterations, we feel its settling into a good spot. The order of the characters and their alignment in the grid are all dynamic so we can easily move them around and add more!

It's ended up a total mash-up of a bunch of character select screens we like. I think suit our game well if I don't say so myself!

Over the past 5 months we have been working with a close friend of ours Anni to produce these awesomely cute characters and abilities!
Here is his ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/metterdevice

This fellow is looking to be our mascot! Doctor Croc!

Pistol Sapiens, she is a blast! capable of firing any calibre or shell! She is not yet rigged or animated

Clashnikov, our evil scientist, capable of harnessing the mass of nearby asteroids to his advantage! He too is not rigged or animated yet

Getting some fairly engaging game-play with only about 3 unique abilities

Modelled off some of my favourite through hole components! 

Getting out of hand within minutes of implementation!

It became apparent quite quickly that when a explosion happens in a radius that it needs to be shown to the player exactly how big it is so they can get a more intuitive understanding of what each ability is capable of.

Its repetitively straightforward to colourise the effect for different types of damage/explosions later in development!

I've wanted to get these guys in for a long time now! However, this is just a technical test to get highly optimised performance from instantiated skinned meshes. The real Space Orcs will be significantly cuter that these seat-warming fellows

Trying to emulate the aesthetic of the older Ratchet & Clank Games

The art side of things is moving along very consistently and honestly staying surprisingly close to the concept sketches 

Quick sketch done on a lunch break

The key to video game interactivity is visual and audio feedback. Every action the player can input changes the animation state of their ship so it never feels like they aren't in control!

Rigs are made by Josiah, animations too for now to set the style, however the plan is to hire a freelance animator!

Feedback & fun! Note the venom face has been removed for obvious reasons ;)

For the first time in my career as a 3d artist, I have paid someone else to make a 3d model for my project! I could get used to working like this!
Here is the original 'concept art' and then final model for the space submarine ship which I think we'll call... Spacemarine! 

Our good friend Anni did a really excellent job with all the models I've asked him to make! We love working with him, he really helped us flesh out the style of the game

Finally! After a Christmas full of interviewing our friends and family about our video game concept we have decided commit to its development into a shippable title! We have made so many video games together since 2013, but never a full finished shippable game between the two of us. And since we've already shipped incredibly successful, award winning games over at Black Lab Games I think its about time we go all out and make our own award winning game!

Very exciting! This is the first time a build was playable on the arcade machine. We ended up having it tested by family members who where gob-smacked by the rapid progress we had made in only a few weeks!

Things are tracking along nicely. We now have an event system to spawn projectiles and cause effects when projectiles hit things, the ships are controllable with multiple game-pads & the art style is on track to match the vision!

A very fake ship selection screen. In fact the image of Spacemarine was a work in progress screenshot from substance painter!

Cheap and dirty concept block out for how we would like the character selection to function, its not pretty, but there is no denying that it works!

With asset lists and design document created, so begins building the sequel for our much beloved game!

Cohesive styling for visuals and visual feedback is core to our philosophy at Big Bench Games, it's what makes a games language understandable and predictable. Now to consult with our sound man to see how he feels the audio should feel to match the visuals!

Josiah created a concise tutorial and published a Substance Painter smart material to go with it to remotely train our 3d artist friend Anni on the model and texture style of the game, and to keep a record of the process for any new 3d artist to join the team in the future!

Blocked out mechanics of moving, shooting and teleporting. Shooting and teleporting both use what we are calling an event system, in which blocks of code can be strung together visually to create arbitrary abilities which can easily be connected to and triggered by 6 predefined controller buttons!

An Idea is born... Inspired in large part by the chance to show it off at Perth Games Festival!

Some of the earliest recorded images from the new game! Space Orcs Brawl! 

Did the Arcade Machine inspire us to make a new game? Or did the new game inspire us to build an arcade machine to play it on?

The design of the box was based on a very rough perspective photo holding the camera in one hand and the computer screen on top of the old box precariously 

The first time the public got to see the original Space Orcs! Perth Games Festival 2018! Thanks to everyone involved with organising it and the public for coming along.

This game was made by entirely by the two founders of Big Bench Games with feedback from Anthony Carriero.

Playable Demo:
https://wdogs.itch.io/space-orcs-orginal-demo
WARNING!! Controls are set up for an Arcade Machine PC, See bellow for information

The game was built for the Arcade Machines at North Metro Tafe East Perth for a novel presentation at Perth Games Festival in order to get myself (Josiah) a job (which worked!). The controls are hard to remember and effectively impossible to play two player on a single keyboard. Controls found bellow;

This was the first time since 2017 that we at Big Bench Games worked on a video game together, and was the moment we realised what we could actually make real, playable video games if we set out to do so!

We had no idea where this would take us, especially only having spent a single morning working on the project...

https://itch.io/jam/cross-campus-jam-2018-1/rate/301599

Oops... We didn't stick to the theme