Hello everyone!
Things are rolling along nicely – we collected the Best PC Hardcore Game Award at Game Connection Europe 2018, and the Steam page for Barotrauma is now live. We’ll be updating the page with important news as we approach the Early Access release, so be sure to wishlist it to stay up to speed with all the latest announcements and updates!
It’s been a long road, but the game is really starting to take shape. In the coming months, we’ll be posting here in more detail about many of the new features to look forward to, so stay tuned to find out what we’ve been up to with the health system, modding, monsters and alien ruins, to name just a few things. We will also be looking for testers for a closed Steam beta version soon!
About the team
The Barotrauma development team has continued to grow since partnering with FakeFish, and we now have over a dozen people working on the game. In the not-so-distant future, we plan to give the floor to some of the team members to talk about their work and Barotrauma in more detail, but for now, here’s a brief introduction of the people working on the game.
Besides myself and Juanjp600, there are a couple of other people working on Barotrauma’s code. Behind the nickname ItchyOwl is a game developer and programmer called Lauri, who’s responsible for much of the work on Baro’s new character editor as well as our overhauled UI system, among other things. Roni AKA Rokvach is a technical artist and programmer who’s contributed to UI improvements and implementing new art assets and, lately, this new website. Both have several years of experience working at game studios and on their own game projects. Just recently we also got a new intern, Alex, to help the programming team with the never-ending bug fixes and content additions.
We’ve also got two full-time game designers working on Baro. The lead designer Ez, or Chad Husk, is a 12-year veteran in the game industry, having worked as a designer on about 20 different titles. Ez is responsible for creating and improving the many in-game systems and ensuring a balanced, interesting experience for the players. Designing many of Baro’s subs and their systems as well a bunch of new content for alien ruins, we have Daniel, a game designer and one of the founders of FakeFish.
Sneak peek inside the new reactor (WIP).
The Barotrauma art team consists of four people, headed by the lead artist Pekka alias Baikonur. With a diverse background in film, animation and games, Pekka takes care of developing the overall mood and feel of the world of Barotrauma, maintaining that fine line between serious scary and tongue-in-cheek. Behind Baro’s concept art and many in-game assets (including a lot of the new art you may have seen on my Twitter) is Iiro, with no known aliases but with a morbid sense of humor and a number of years of experience on both PC and mobile games.
Additionally, artists Nam-Anh and Dinh AKA Simpledinh started at FakeFish as student interns last spring and now work full-time on Baro art. Nam-Anh works on UI art and Dinh on the interior spaces and exterior walls of subs and shuttles, both of them also working on the various items and machinery on board.
Another FakeFish founder, Jussi from Audire Sound, is working with the Baro development team as an audio designer. Jussi is designing ambience, music and sound assets to match the game’s deep and tense feeling. Jussi’s been involved in game audio design for over 5 years now, having produced and composed music for over two decades.
Light at the end of the tunnel? Some WIP art from under Europa’s frozen surface.
Last but not least, we finally have a dedicated marketing and community division, ready to catch all requests, ideas and complaints being talked about and to spread the word about Baro. FakeFish founder Aku, or MFCEO, is the executive producer who keeps all our heads above water in addition to taking care of PR. We also have Kimmo, a seasoned expert in PR and business communications in the video game and media industries, and another recent addition Vilma alias Dynamoon, a communications specialist and people person tasked with listening to our community and making sure nothing slips through the cracks.
So we’ve really come a long way from what began as mainly a solo project with a handful of occasional collaborators. But don’t be fooled by this almost corporate appearance, it’s still very much an indie studio at heart – even though we’re aiming to make Barotrauma a commercially successful product, we’re still committed to keeping the core experience and feel of the game intact and to listening to the existing community to make sure we don’t stray too far off the path. Baro is fundamentally community-driven and will stay as such, and so we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
If you have any sort of feedback or questions about the stuff you’ve seen or read about the upcoming Steam release, about the free public version, or anything else, let us know here in the comments or drop a line on the forums, and see you around Discord!
And here are a few of us with that award!
Aleksandr (you can call me crawler)
Wow, just wow. Guys i love plaing your game, but i realy hate to lag, so please do somthing to optimise it. (sry for my English im Russian)
~Dr. Crawler
Amin Al-hachami
I cant Believe its getting on steam. since the first time ive seen this game ive been a huge fan and i hope the best for all of you. also quick question, will this be free or will you have to pay for it and anything you plan to add to the beta because i would love to test it.
Regalis
The Steam release won’t be free – we haven’t decided the exact price yet, but it’ll probably be somewhere in the ballpark of $15-$20. We’ll be doing a closed beta period before the release and there’s a chance you might get to test it then. There will be more info about the closed beta in the blog soon so stay tuned!
Scott Scibek
I really love this game, but I may have a hard time deciding whether to play the new, updated Barotrauma, or sticking with Barotrauma Extended, as they both have unique parts to them. Do you have any plans to work together with the creators of Barotrauma Extended to make, like, a super Barotrauma? Or are you going to leave it as a mod for people to download off the workshop? I am also curious if there will be a mod manager in Barotrauma, so we will be able to disable mods without having to close the game or unsubscribing from them.
Would also love some beta keys for me and my crew. I am very excited for the Steam release, as it was a pain in the but to get everyone to reinstall Barotrauma and Barotrauma Extended every time there was an update.
Regalis
We of course hope that everyone (including mod creators) would move to the new version. So hopefully you won’t have to choose between those two options, but can keep playing BTE on the new version.
At the moment we have no plans to use material directly from BTE – and probably couldn’t even if Chiko allowed us to, because as far as I know the mod uses assets taken from other games. But we are definitely looking into it as a source of inspiration when designing new content. Many of the features in it are things that should’ve been a part of the vanilla game already, while others I feel are not as necessary and may work better as a mod.
As for the mod manager, I guess you could consider the Steam Workshop menu a kind of mod manager where you can download, install and choose which mods to use.
I can’t promise you beta keys yet (we’re still trying to figure out how many keys to share and how exactly we’re choosing who gets them), but keep an eye on the blog – there’s a blog post coming up in the following weeks with further details about the closed beta.