Game Rant recently had a chance to talk with Walter Tischkewitz, co-founder of Semiwork, the studio working on Voidigo. It is a roguelite dungeon crawler with a basic premise that should be familiar by now. However, the game stands out because of its vibrant color scheme, vivid animations, and gameplay elements inspired by Monster Hunter. It's an interesting combination, and we wanted to ask Tischkewitz, one of the game's primary creators, how Voidigo's unique blend of style and substance came about.

Tischkewitz revealed that the studio had primarily worked on comedic animated shorts before delving into game design, which goes a long way towards explaining some of Voidigo's unique design and gameplay considerations. That revelation came while Tischkewitz explained the game's artstyle. It's far more cutesy and colorful than most rogue-likes, which usually prefer a gritty atmosphere and muted hues.

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"The art style evolved as we developed the game. I would say that we developed that style because we worked together before games on making animations. So the inspiration comes from things like Adventure Time, or something like Over the Garden Wall, but more colorful. That was our inspiration for our animated short films we did before the game. The game art and style is similar to our animations."

It turns out that using so much color has its own challenges though. Tischkewitz pointed out a similar issue to one that the developers of Minit, a game completely in black and white, described: making sure the player can still tell what's going on can be difficult without contrast.

It’s a slippery slope when it comes to color. At first we just went all in with colors, but we weren’t thinking too carefully. I then I had to spend months to fine-tune the colors, because the player needs to see what’s happening. It’s a bold choice to go with colors like that, because you have to think about what can go wrong when you have yellow ground and yellow bullets- that’s no good.... Something that we utilize a lot is that everything moves. Even if an enemy is standing still, it moves a lot. That helps because the eye can see movement really well. It helps to make things readable.

voidigo art pink

Keeping everything in constant motion, of course, also stems from the team's experience in animation. "We couldn’t make a character and them not have an interesting idle animation." The influence of an animation-focused mindset goes far deeper than just the visuals, though, as Tischkewitz went on to discuss while explaining what makes Voidigo stand out. It's no secret that the market is currently saturated with pixel rogue likes these days, but Tischkewitz opined that Semiwork's unique team is what sets them apart from the crowd.

We’re all animators. Even our musician is an animator. He’s also a co-founder, and he also makes sound effects. When an animator makes sound effects, it shows. Animators are aware of buildup and timing. Also, we’ve all done comedy before as well.... Our team is very special, I think we have a style that sticks out.

Tischkewitz went on to explain in more detail the ways that a team experienced in animation was able to migrate their skills over to Voidigo. It seemed like he was both surprised and pleased with how well the shift in mediums panned out. "It's exciting how well animation translated to game design for us."

Animators know 'game feel' because that’s basically what animation is. The buildup of a punch in an animation, you want that in a game.... I often hear people talk about game feel, and what they are usually talking about is how good the animation is.... [A game] should be able to turn off the sound effects and still feel punchy. If you’re an animator, you often hear sounds while animating, even though you don’t have sound yet. It’s the same in a game, even without sound you should almost be able to hear it because of the camera shake, the movement. You understand that there are supposed to be sounds there.

Something as ineffable as "game feel" is hard to define by nature, but from what we've seen of Voidigo, it looks like it could be a standout in the rogue-like genre. Its artstyle is one thing, but videos of gameplay do exude the "punchiness" that Tischkewitz expressed was a priority. The game is still in development, too, only recently releasing in early access, but with Monster Hunter-inspired mechanics and such a different take on game design, it's definitely one to keep an eye on.

Voidigo is currently in early access on PC.

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