 Linus Tech Tips coverage of PAX 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital, Intel, and SteelSeries. Hey guys, we're here at the Indie Megabooth checking out Aztez. I had to check this game out not only because the art style looks amazing, but there's blood everywhere and that's just awesome. So what can you tell me about this game? So Aztez is actually two games. It's a beat-em-up and also a strategy game. So the idea is that you're going to go back and forth between the two, you're going to have some fun real-time beat-em-up segments and then kind of make some decisions and think a little bit. The reason we did that is just because we're tired of the standard beat-em-up formula and just want to see something new. So for sure, what can you tell me more about the building mode or the the nation controlling mode? So you're basically going to be looking at a giant map of the Aztec Empire shortly before the Spanish show up and the idea is that you're going to be pushing on the boundaries of the empire trying to expand it but also managing chaos. So when it happens you're going to enter one of the many city environments and knock some heads around. So you know it's kind of the way the Aztecs did things. So basically if someone messes with your turf you go knock them out which sounds pretty cool. Yeah exactly. Now one thing is when you go to knock these guys out you can control different characters. Can you tell me more about that? You're actually controlling a like a special forces unit almost. So this is just like a very very powerful get in there make a mess send the message get out but when it's all said and done you'll be able to look however you want. You'll be able to use one of four different weapons. We want it to be very expressive and feel like it's you know you're making decisions and it's a reflection of you but it is just a non-descript special forces warrior. So that's cool that's cool. I noticed again you said making a mess. As I mentioned earlier there's blood everywhere. What can you tell me about the blood mechanic? So the reason there's a blood mechanics was the Aztecs were very very big on blood. It was actually part of their religious belief system. They believed that the sun was moving through the sky on an engine of blood which is why they were so crazy about sacrifice. Like those aren't legends they actually did that a lot. So we figured it would really pipe into what was cool about the Aztecs to have the blood actually be a part of the game. So the way it works is that in the game you're spilling blood constantly because of the fighting you can absorb it and and based on different factors it'll do different things for you. Always advantageous but it's just a way to to make something that's always there actually be useful. Yeah right and that ties into the combo points and amount of hits you can get. In what way? It depends sometimes it'll give you health back sometimes it'll extend your combo meter. We're thinking at this point it's not finalized yet but we're thinking at this point we want to give you a choice. What do you want the blood to do? So that's great and like uh with the combo stuff wow sorry I just had to point out that was an insane amount of blood that just flew through the screen. Um certain like every once in a while you hear an eagle sound and the guy jumps up is that just the jump or is that something else going on there? We're trying to give every single enemy attack a distinct tell and that means a very specific visual and a very specific piece of audio so when you're hearing that eagle scream that basically means that it's a specific attack that's about to happen and so it kind of gives you mentally prepared for what's happening in the next second. Right and the whole mental preparedness this is not a game that's based around button mashing. If you notice when he just whiffed right there a whiff is when you miss a person so you're trying to grow up your combo you're trying to get all those extra points you whiff you lose your combo so it's more about strategy listening to the key points like you were just talking about and making sure that you land all those hits because that is how you can get more blood and more points. Um one other thing that I had to touch on is the art style because the second you walk past this booth you notice it's very unique. What can you tell me about that? So the reason we have an art style that looks like this is because a I thought it would be a cool challenge I've never really done anything like this before and I'm the only artist on the project so the other reason something like this makes a lot of sense is because if we had a very very complex art style it'd be difficult to create a lot of assets so we had to do something that would make us stand out and that also made sense from a production point of view and that's kind of why we ended up here. Um the only other reason is that it sort of makes sense and kind of looks as techy at the end of the day so it's just it's it's what ended up making the most sense for us. Yeah it looks fantastic and you're definitely right it does look as techy but there must have been some amount of challenges in running this as well because making things pop out must have been interesting was was that difficult? Oh yeah I mean it took a long time to get it to the point to where it was both interesting and not difficult to look at so I mean people compare it to mad world a lot which I totally understand but the thing about mad world is that there's no gray it's actually very very difficult on a lot of people's eyes so I was trying to get as far away from something like that as possible because obviously I don't want to create any physical pain in anyone playing my game but it did take a while to get it to the sweet spot so. It's a really good point about the gray because when you look at this game it's not it's sharp contrast but it's not sharp because it's still comfortable and smooth to look at and it's really cool that you were able to capture that. Yeah for sure I mean the the trick is really that the characters and the effects are black the foreground is like a dark gray and then it just slowly creates this fake sense of depth by just lightening the gray so it is it is ultimately still very simple but it's helping create the distinction of the layers for the eyeballs so yeah. That's really cool and one thing that they also added in is that you can play this on oculus rift luckily in unity it's not really that hard to add rift support so they added that and honestly if I was to play this game I'd love to pick up on oculus rift so I'm super happy that you guys implemented that they've slightly changed the angle so that it makes a lot more sense what can you tell me about that? So the only thing that we really did is that we brought the camera a little bit lower and a little bit closer into the characters so what that means is that you've got to actually look to the left and the right to see what's happening around you and it's just very compelling something about it made it much more engaging it made it much more interesting but since you have to look around it also makes the environment much more alive and so that was the only change that we made in five minutes we're like let's try this and it ended up being awesome so we're sticking with it but yeah I mean like I said it's unity it's an easy implementation so you'll be able to play on the rift when the game is out yeah that's great to hear a recurring theme I find with this game is that you guys made something that seems simple a change that seems simple that made all the difference and maybe we'll make in my opinion we'll make this game which is really great to hear I appreciate it thank you for running us through the booth yeah thank you if you'd like to see all of our content in the indie mega booth if you'd like to see all of our content at PAX be sure to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips