Former Maxis employee turned Indie developer, Chris Hecker unveiled new character designs and artwork yesterday for his upcoming title SpyParty.
John Cimino, who worked with Hecker on Spore, has been secretly working on the character update since September 2011. However, his involvement with SpyParty has only now been revealed alongside the new artwork. As Hecker puts it, Cimino’s addition “doubled the team size”, adding “this rate of growth simply cannot be sustained.”
Speaking to Joystiq, Hecker described the new character art style as “illustrative”, saying:
“We spent a ton of time trying to figure out the best possible art style for the game. We really wanted the art style to reflect the same level of subtlety that the gameplay has. I didn’t want it to be too realistic or too exaggerated, and I think we hit it on this really nice, call it naturalistic or illustrative – they look like illustrations. I’m super excited.”
None of the new SpyParty character models (seen in the gallery below) have been inserted into the game yet, but once they get to the party the older placeholder characters will be “retired” along with their identities. The new characters (which will number between 20-30, when all is said and done) will all have fresh names, so as to respect the older prototype characters that many of the beta players have grown to love.
For those that have not been keeping up with SpyParty, the game basically puts two characters in the role of opposing spies. One player is attending a party and must blend in with all the other AI characters, while at the same time secretly completing spy-type missions objectives. The other player’s role is to take up a sniper position away from the party, figure out who the spy is and then take them out.
With the game still in active development, SpyParty does not yet have a release window. Similarly, the full list of platforms that it will release on has not been announced. Hecker states in the game’s FAQ page that he hopes to have it on “all the major platforms that will run it”, including; PC, Mac, Steam, XBLA, PSN, and possibly Wii U and iPad.
Source: SpyParty website