Major Update: Flying Souls (v1.1.1) ????
HELLo, soldiers of Hell! How have you been?
We’ve been in overdrive preparing things for the end of the year and have some explosive new stuff for you! Are you ready? Check this out!
https://youtu.be/1Jc_yza1upM
Since we released the update in August, at Saibot Studios we have been working non-stop fixing bugs, improving the game in general, and at the same time creating new content. So we bring you...
- Flying Souls: The true new level 5 of the campaign. The most complex and varied scenario of all: with indoor and outdoor confrontations and with the highest amount of secrets: 10 (SPOILER: 3 of which are almost-impossible and combined); and aesthetically SHOCKING: a floating island in the clouds, with two huge rings rotating around it.
- Pygon: a completely new enemy that’s different from all the rest. It flies, spits energy balls that deal area damage, and teleports to dodge your attacks. We also added this creature to the next levels, so we recommend re-playing them as well.
- Ground Zero: We recreated the classic Survival Mode scenario that we launched back in 2018 in the new version of the game, and we included it both in the original game (optional) and in the campaign. Among many other improvements compared to the classic, the new one has high-quality textures, new and improved 3D models, character ragdolls, bloodstains on the stage, new animations and visual effects for weapons, remastered music, Hellgore character voices, and much more!
Doing all this was an investment that was not in the plans. Our Publisher Nimble Giant supported our development until the August release and we are grateful for that. Although both teams were very proud of the product we achieved, the sales results were not as expected.
We at Saibot then decided to go one step further and invest what little money we had left to continue improving and expanding the game, thus giving Hellbound the closure it deserves. Unfortunately, we are far from the game recouping its investment or for us to see any revenue in sales and thus be able to continue expanding the game even more.
That is why this update that we bring you today is a gift for all of you who have been supporting us, so that you can enjoy even a little more of this crazy project that was so important to us. It won't be as big a gameplay extension as you expected, but this is because our vision (commercially flawed probably) was always focused on making a small, high-quality product in all aspects of the game by adding tons of handcrafted details in each scene, enemy, item, weapon, etc. That was always our main objective; in addition to (of course) invoking the spirit of the classic FPS that we are so passionate about.
Each level of the campaign took us between 3 and 4 months of hard work, with an incredible development team of 6 people (of which only 4 were full time). The levels are built by hand, without any type of pattern or modular objects like tiles. This makes everything look more varied and organic, which was what we wanted; instead of repeated and simple.
We’re taking this update as an opportunity to say goodbye to Saibot's current team as we will not be in a financial position to continue supporting the team until further notice. Next year a new phase will begin for everyone, with new journeys, opportunities and new projects.
Thanks again to everyone who supported us, these past 5 years have been truly AMAZING, we grew SO MUCH and built something GREAT together.
We leave you with screenshots of the new content, we hope you like it as much as we do.
Cheers from the unstoppable team at Saibot Studios!
Tobías Rusjan
Campaign level Flying Souls:
Survival Mode Remaster level Ground Zero:
