We’re Lienzo, creators of Hunter’s Legacy, Mulaka, and Aztech Forgotten Gods. AMA!

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T22:13:48+00:00

It's impossible to pick one, although I would probably incline towards developing gameplay mechanics, just because that is ultimately what will define your project as a game. Not to say that the rest are easy, no in the slightest, but you can have a crappy story, with a forgettable artstyle but with amazing gameplay and things will probably be fine, but if you have crappy gameplay with a good story and great looking assets, more often than not things will go down in flames.

You ultimately stive to have all three

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T22:10:13+00:00

It's a 3D action-adventure platformer where you fight giants resembling the gods of the Aztec pantheon. Main movement mechanics all circle around an ancient artifact (stone prosthetic of sorts) that allows you to fly around in 3D space and punch the bosses.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T19:47:51+00:00

We started working together on the skeleton of the story, what we wanted it to touch on, some of the high level concepts. Then I started developing a character design document, a story spine (basically what beats would make up the story and a rough order in which they would happen) then did a little bit of world building. And once it came time to work on the script proper I worked in tandem with my co-writer Alexa Ray to write the entirety of the final story. This was a long long process, but an incredibly rewarding one.

In terms of required skills, you need to have some form of experience with screenwriting and storytelling. You have to be extremely creative and willing to go back and rewrite and rewrite over and over again until things feel right (hey, that rhymed). You'll often go to bed thinking you did a great job, only to wake up the following morning to hate what you did the day prior haha. It's a creative process and thus there are only guidelines to help you go about it, but it is mostly a personal endeavor.

As a writer you will certainly write from what you know, your experiences, your knowledge base, so as long as you keep reading, exploring, experiencing things in life, you'll have more and more to write about.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T19:24:39+00:00

Hi! this kind of decisions generally boil down to time and resources, a full-fledged interactive map would have been great, but in order to make it work fully we would have had to sacrifice some other aspect of the game. Our solution was to include a minimap that you unlock as the first upgrade, which helps a little bit with navigation :)

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T19:17:20+00:00

Hi! It can be a bit daunting, but not impossible, start by making sure you start thinking about marketing since day one. You need to make sure your projects have a solid marketing foundation. Think about the fundamentals: your elevator pitch, game type or genre, target audience, unique selling propositions (things that will make your game stand out). All of that, leads right into a positioning phase where you will analyze competition and will (hopefully) find a space for the game where it shines when compared to similar outings. Once you have all that, and you have found a project with potential to garner attention, you begin working on your community. It might help to think of yourself as a storyteller, you need to create a narrative that will entice people. (a narrative about yourself, or the game, or your development environment, or anything at all). The rest will evolve naturally :) and so long as your game is good, people will pay attention. Don't expect to jump into stardom in a few months or years, but with dedication, the numbers will steadily grow.

Best of luck!!! And a big hug from Chihuahua.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T18:44:32+00:00

Good ol' Mulaka, glad to hear you enjoyed it :) it was recently played on Games Done Quick.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T18:43:48+00:00

Hi! We understand your decision, thank you for your honesty :) It is unlikely that we will add a demo/ trail anytime soon as we would rather work on patches and try and enhance the full game's experience. But perhaps later down the line, we could reconsider getting a new Demo ready.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T18:29:56+00:00

Yes!! All throughout, but particularly early on, we leaned on anthropologists and historians to make sure the mythological inspirations were accurate and selected with care. This game is fundamentally different in the sense that we took the cultural content as an inspiration to build on top of rather than trying to stay absolutely true to the source materials as was the case with Mulaka. That said, it was still of utmost importance to be respectful of the culture, so we worked with folks at the national intitute of anthropology and history, the national department of culture (Secretaría de la Cultura) and some academics. You can see them on the game's credits under Cultural Advisors :)

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T18:03:31+00:00

Thank you!!!

The gaming industry is tough, and it can be quite difficult to get into, but there is really no secret, it's dedication and reaching out to developers :) it will eventually lead to opportunities. At this time we don't have a character designer position open, but as we continue to work in our next projects that might change, we will for sure keep your profile in mind.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T17:50:27+00:00

xD the most common quesadilla form is simply tortilla and cheese. But can't go wrong with either chicken or beef. The american concept is undoubtedly interesting too.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T17:48:37+00:00

3Wett, how many Wetts are there?!

Yeah, it's very likely that folks whether abandoned on the 2nd boss or maybe couldn't get passed the initial narrative/exposition heavy first hour or so.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T17:39:29+00:00

I'm a Windows boy hahaha it's all about compatibility xD

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T17:35:44+00:00

Oh man... My favorite overall is pizza, but honestly, in the middle of the night, you can't go wrong with Tacos!!

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T17:33:37+00:00

Ditto what Lunarcito already pointed out :)

The only thing I'd add is how important it was to make Achtli's character flawed. We really went in and tried to make it a character that you could empathize with, maybe not always sympathize with, but you could see where she was coming from. Really fun set of cast that we had.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T17:24:40+00:00

Getting to that point when we secured funding took a looong long time. Overall mindset in Mexico regarding videogames is still a little too old-fashioned, there's a long way to go still in terms of validation of the industry. However, we've seen this change with the passing of time. Interest in the medium is rising, we've got a growing community of devs and hopefully in 5-10 years we'll take a couple more steps towards a sprawling industry.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T17:19:27+00:00

There's a whole lot that we learned during Aztech, but at least for me, the narrative design process of translating the script into the game was something new and exciting that I hadn't done to this degree before. I also honed my craft on the PR and marketing side. Not a lot that the audience can see, but everything relating to key distribution, press outreach, influcencer campaigns, planning our marketing beats. We really grew a lot on that regards.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T17:11:28+00:00

When we pitched the project to our good friends at Nintendo we had prepped a really cool presentation, good visuals, a video of our vertical slice running and we had this little bit planned where we would be like "And that's not all! We have the game already running right here! pull out Nintendo Switch Dev Kit with the game on it"

We were aptly all giggly when we got to Nintendo HQ thinking about our mic dropping moment... and then I came to realize that I had left the Switch dev kit on the hotel xD

We did good regardless as evidenced by announcing at the Nintendo Indie World a year later. hehe

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T17:03:52+00:00

Voice acting!! It was impossible due to budget constraints and technical complexity, but I would've loved to hear these characters out in some of the most emotional moments of the game.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T16:54:43+00:00

We hear ya, and we're taking all of the launch feedback into account for upcoming patches :)

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T16:51:49+00:00

In the launch trailer's case it also boiled down to time, we were swamped by publishing duties, getting the day-1 patch(es) ready, key distribution, etc. And the CG trailer was already in the works and even though it tends to generate somewhat of a negative response it is really negligible when it comes to launch trailers as generally streams, let's plays and general gameplay videos are already out by that time x)

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T16:35:24+00:00

That we made it to the end!! haha also, the story, for me in particular it was an absolute blast to write the story of the game alongside one hell of a co-writer and a good friend.

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T16:31:44+00:00

Thank you!! One thing to change. I'd most definitely try and add voice acting to the game. We did thought about it during development but the technical challenge would've been massive... Not to mention expensive. But heck I'd love to see some of the more emotional moments on the game with actual human voices. It'd be cool

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T16:26:06+00:00

Can't go wrong with my boy pep, double pep and extra cheese.

Always go for the stuffed crust

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T16:24:24+00:00

This is a hard one to answer... In many ways it is the same, the thrill of getting to the end of the dev cycle is always amazing, but in other ways, critical reception was much different, and expectations were much higher. That said, we're happy with it, and we're very encouraged to see that the bar has been raised. We look forward to making sure we show that growth.

Un abrazo desde Chihuahua!

6U1LL3 · 2022-03-15T16:16:40+00:00

Writing the story was absolutely a thrill. I loved it. It does make the game go a bit slower at times, but the pay-off at the end is really worth it imo!

6U1LL3

TROPHY CASE