Hello from all of us here at Drop Bear Bytes! Been a couple months since we shared an update here (you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram where we post a new screenshot almost every week) so please enjoy this look at what the team have been up to!

First off, we’ve been preparing more of the creatures you’ll encounter in Broken Roads, from the usual domestic and farm animals to WA’s wildlife, and of course some of the more… ‘out there’ inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic future Australia. Here’s our feral pig, modeled by Art Lead Bianca Roux and textured by Lead Environment Artist Sara Laubscher.

We’ve also been revisiting the UI across the board, reworking almost everything in combat from the ground up. Here’s a shot of the team during a recent art review looking at the proposed icons for some of the skills and abilities in Broken Roads. Big fan of the ‘miffed’ icon, personally…

One of our newer devs, Dean Baron, who joined us in November has been diving into improving our quests, XP and level up systems (somewhat essential classics of the RPG genre!) and getting them where they need to be for some exciting things we want to show off a little later this year.

And here we have a spoiler-free look at a very late-game conversation written by our Narrative Director, Leanne Taylor-Giles. This snapshot of a conversation is taken from articy:draft, the narrative design tool we’re using on Broken Roads, and gives a hint at the level of reactivity and choice available to players based upon earlier moral decisions - or immoral decisions, if that’s your thing. Each of the blue, purple, red or yellow nodes corresponds with a quadrant on the moral compass. Grey is an NPC node and green is a standard dialogue option. ‘Fun’ fact: this one point in this conversation is about three times as large as shown here…

And finally, a look at one of the new interiors the team completed. We couldn’t be happier with the leaps forward the art team have made bringing these environments to another level. Scenes are looking better than ever and our newest additions to the art team - Thobile Simelane, 3D Modeler and Kyle Zeeman, Texture artist - are creating beautiful props to populate the world. Once again, credit to our VFX & Technical Artist Ryan Gee for the lighting, VFX and finishing touches that tie it all together.

Thanks for reading!
- The Team at Drop Bear Bytes

Broken Roads March 2023 update

Drop Bear Bytes would like to acknowledge the Wadawurrung people, Traditional Custodians of the land on which this game is made, and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.