Time has flown by and although it’s been a quiet few months with fewer updates, our team has been working a lot in the background especially on the game design and programming side, getting the mechanics polished and tightened up so we can create a fun, cohesive and excellent experience for all of you!
Here’s a summary of our work and achievements since March in one BIG update!
Game Mechanics
So far, our team has completed 10 prototyping sprints this year. A sprint is a short, focused period where different design elements are prototyped, tested out and validated before further work is done to incorporate them into the game.
Through this process, our development team has iterated on the dialogue system, discovery and meta loop, traversal, time, stealth and combat elements of our game.
Yes, you read it right – we’re experimenting with non-lethal combat mechanics as well. What do you think about that?
Lots of new mechanics have been tested in the past months, and we’re looking forward to revealing more once we’re ready to! We’ve been conducting rounds of playtesting among members of our community, and we’re getting closer to the result!
Prototyping retreat
Last month, the team in Norway took a short retreat in Sweden to focus completely on a sprint, the main goal being to tie player motivation and the newly-designed game mechanics together.
Art
We’ve made a lot of progress on the art front in recent months. One big milestone we’ve reached is that we’ve now completed concept art of the Capernaum rich district, residential district and Simon Peter’s house, and we’re now moving on to designing landmarks.
We’ve also started implementing the Capernaum rich district buildings into the game world. Check out an early look below!
To prepare for further world-building, we’ve been developing a modular system for buildings, structures, materials and textures to have centralized control over the art, improve efficiency and optimize memory and performance.
Aside from buildings, we’ve also been working closely with our history consultants to develop a solid basis for 1st century characters and clothing as we begin to create concept art for the crowd.
Another thing we’ve been prototyping that we haven’t shown much of yet are World State Effects – alternative renderings to the normal world that indicate a different state the player is in. The world effects are connected to the time travel element of our game and bring yet another exciting dimension to gameplay.
Research
In the past months, we have established a tight, solid collaboration and workflow with our history consultants. Their insight and research is invaluable to the game we are creating, and we are constantly in awe over the rich depth there is to the Bible’s stories both from a historical and archaeological standpoint.
Besides offering input to ensure historical accuracy, we’ve experienced that the amazing teamwork we’ve got going with these historians extends beyond getting the facts right. Knowledge of archaeology and history can also add fun elements to the game’s design and mechanics, for example with the addition of maps, artifacts, caves and environmental obstacles, as well as daily-life habits and tasks of the locals.
Team Updates & Office Fun
As development progresses, we have also been actively hiring to recruit the necessary talent to complete the game. New additions to the team include a game designer, associate producer, technical artist, texture artist, two level designers, and most recently, a senior game designer.
Events
Game Developers Conference 2024
In March, we brought a Gate Zero booth for the first time to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, the game industry’s premier professional event.
Despite being a rare faith-based game and studio at the conference, we received overwhelmingly positive feedback and met many awesome people genuinely interested in what we are doing!
Read the full GDC report and see the pictures here
Fundraising retreat
Did you know that our organization BCC Media, which Bible X is a department of, is a registered nonprofit in Norway?
At the beginning of this year, we started efforts to form a nonprofit organization also in the US so that we can begin fundraising here. The organization, called Friends of BCC Media dba NextGen Bible Media, is awaiting its 501(c)(3) status in the US, and is currently actively fundraising on behalf of Gate Zero.
You are welcome to make a tax-deductible donation already now by giving to our TrustBridge Global Fund.
At the end of March, our fundraising team and newly-formed board met in Norway for a retreat where we worked through strategy, legal paperwork and a plan for the road ahead.
If you’re interested in learning more about NextGen Bible Media, check out our website here
Future Events
At the end of this month, we will be attending the Imladris retreat in Oregon, a gathering for Christians in the interactive entertainment industry, as well as Forward Conference, a large Christian student conference in Atlanta, where we will have a Gate Zero booth!
Youversion Bible Reading Plan
For those of you who missed the news, we launched our very first Bible Reading Plan, “Explore the Epic Temple in Jerusalem,” on the Youversion Bible App in March, which now has over 3000 subscriptions.
The plan takes you into the temple in 1st century Jerusalem, with unique cutscenes from the Gate Zero game world, as well as key Bible verses explaining the temple’s significance for us today.
Marketing
In March, we hit an exciting milestone: 500,000 followers across all social media platforms and 50M combined views! We are overwhelmed with the attention Gate Zero is getting, and humbled and motivated to keep working hard. Thank you SO much for all your continued support and encouragement!
We can’t help but share this viral video made by a well-known Gen Z Christian content creator about Gate Zero. This one cracked us up!
@joechristianguy I had to 😂 @Bible X Games #jesus #love #fyp #christian #bible #bibleverse #trending
And with that, we leave you with an awesome piece of fan art created by VoxVulpes from our Discord community.
… Thank you very much for your update information – very rich in content and informative! Please be so kind and reactivate the DEVLOG#n°. on “Youtube” (advantage: everyone can see it / disadvantage: perhaps more work) …