Broken Roads August 2023 Update
Broken Roads at gamescom 2023
It’s the end of August and that means gamescom again! We sent a small crew to Cologne to show off Broken Roads to European press as part of the Australian contingent in IGEA’s booth and were very stoked to see Broken Roads’ key art blown up huge on the stand walls.
We demo’d Broken Roads for three days straight, met a ton of fellow developers working on some awesome projects, took a quick look at what the AAA studios are up to, and of course checked out the most intriguing new indie games in the works.
One of the highlights of this year’s event was showing off the localised build to European journalists and getting their take on the quality of the translations - and we’re very happy to say feedback was extremely positive. Broken Roads will launch in numerous languages - English, French, German, Russian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish (LatAm) - and seeing people enjoy the game in their own languages was great.
Gamescom is that strange mix of fun and exhausting, where you can’t wait for it to start and then you find yourself really relieved once it’s all over. We had a blast, but now it’s back to work on the last few months before launch!
(Above) The line for wishlisting Broken Roads was longer than ever this year.
A big thanks to all the journalists who have been covering Broken Roads. We’ve already seen a few articles start to drop:
Gamereactor: Broken Roads (Gamescom 2023) - In videogames, as in life, not everything is black and white (English)
Xboxygen: On a joué à Broken Roads à la Gamescom : nos impressions ! (French)
Konsolowe: Gamescom 2023: Graliśmy w mnóstwo indyków (Polish)
Starbit: Gamescom 2023 – Broken Roads (Portuguese)
It was also great to showcase a new build of Broken Roads next to our good friend at Catchweight Studio (wishlist CONSCRIPT on Steam here).
And that’s a wrap for gamescom 2023.
Only one more event for us (PAX Australia, from 6-8 October!) before Broken Roads’ launch later this year!
More animals!
Western Australia is home to a huge amount of farmland, and it wouldn’t be an authentic experience without the animals one finds there. Aside from the top secret, wait-and-see-what-we-have-in-store mutant creatures, here’s a quick look at some of the animals still being farmed in Broken Roads' post-apocalyptic future Australia.
Patrol paths
There are a lot of ingredients that go into making an RPG and bringing the world to life, and one of the largest leaps forward we experienced as a team was when we added in patrol paths for our NPCs. Until we’d set this feature up, NPCs were standing or sitting in one place, and our busy and bustling post-apoc communities were a little… static.
The team are now implementing patrol paths and a range of animations throughout the game, and we’re really happy to show off some of the results so far.
"Some people interact with those around them, others are secluded to their work,” says Level Designer, Luke Dorman. “In the past couple of weeks, I have been using Senior Developer Amos Wolfe's Patrol Paths Editor to allow characters to walk around and perform various animations.”
“With these tools, I've been able to give many of the NPCs in Broken Roads little stories and personalities shown through the paths they travel and the tasks they carry out.”
We’ve only got a few scenes left to go, and with the day/night cycle plus the range of chapters and possible game states, we’re able to have varying patrol paths set up depending on where, and when, in the game you are.
Latest RELEASE FROM THE BROKEN ROADS OST
As with our last few updates, we’ve been dropping a new track to YouTube ever month. "Ambient 1" is part of the Broken Roads soundtrack, written, recorded and produced by Drop Bear Bytes' Audio Lead and Composer, Tim Sunderland. With launch just a few months away, there’s only a few more coming before you’ll have to see the rest in the game itself.
And that’s it for August! We’ll have more to show next month - and keep an eye out for some other big announcements coming very, very soon!
- The Drop Bear Bytes team