Codeglue studios has been known for the creation of several popular games like Rocket Riot, Ibb and Obb, as well as the iOS, Android, and Windows phone versions of Terraria. They have recently developed a new 2D action arena shooter title named Antegods. On their main blog site, blog.codeglue.com, they had described the game’s main theme and aesthetics to be along the lines of the term that they had coined as ‘Stone punk’. We emailed the team and had the pleasure of speaking with their lead programmer, Niels Uiterwijk and their lead artist, Tom Rutjens who were happy to answer our question.
What exactly is Stonepunk?
Tom: “What we find extremely inspiring about ancient civilizations, are the enormous buildings and statues. It can be hard to believe that they were made by human hands without the use of tools we have nowadays. Using that as guidance, we set about creating something that was large scale and epic, not limited to the rules we have today. It was an easy step to come up with the playable characters as being huge statues that could be moved by some mystical power source found in space.”
“In the numerous meetings we had discussing the visual style of the game, there were moments where we described the visual style as “Steampunk, but then made out of stone!”. It was from this that the term ‘Stonepunk’ was born. It tied in so well with the idea of Mayans that went to space and developed further that it is now the defining term for everything in Antegods. ”
In the same blog post they made about their new title, it was said that they had showed off a prototype build at Gamescom and the visuals at the time had stayed close to Rocket Riot. They received reactions saying “Is this Rocket Riot 2?” and this concerned them since that wasn’t what they were after. We asked them if the creation of the Stonepunk visuals were a result of trying to make it look different from their previous titles.
Tom: “Antegods was meant as a spiritual successor to Rocket Riot, but we felt a sequel needed more tactical depth and wanted to step away from the arcade play style that is Rocket Riot. Antegods draws its inspiration from other MOBA’s but has some new gameplay mechanics such as the cooperation need for the titan. With our experience with ibb and obb, Playstation Home and Action Henk we were confident we had the know how to challenge ourselves and create something that was well beyond what we already had done before.”
After that, we were looking for a little more insight on the world of Antegods and asked if the machines and weapons in Antegods were a result of scientific or mystical powers and if that had any affect on gameplay whatsoever.
Niels: “It’s not 100% scientific or mystic, but definitely a mix of both; spiritual energy that’s being channeled and used through technology. In the comic we explore it a bit further by explaining what is going on, and why and how people are fighting in these stone punk mech’s. It doesn’t really affect the gameplay that much. It’s more used as inspiration for the art.”
We now know the story behind ‘Stonepunk’ and how awesome the general theme for the game is. Antegods is currently on fig.io where the developers are trying to get the necessary funds to continue and finish the development of the game. We’re excited for what is to come once the goal is reached and the game is released.
