The world of DOOMBLADE features a plane called The Void. It is a dimension integral to the story of the game and it also has a very important mechanical function: it is the realm of fast traveling.
Very early on in development, we knew we wanted the game to have an area called The Void. There was no particular reason for this - we just thought it would be cool to have a dimension of vast emptiness. At that point, we didn’t know what The Void would look like, we didn’t know how it would fit in the story, and we didn’t know how it would be used in the game’s design.
In the first drafts of the game’s story (which were pretty much scrapped as Andrew Adams, our game writer, got on board) The Void was the source of the game’s monsters. Somehow, it was also the source of power for DOOMBLADE, the game’s titular sword. The final story did retain some of those elements but in a very different form.
In an early demo of the game, The Void made its debut as a part of a boss fight which made it into the final game. Juha the artist drew inspiration from the Ultima series he had played in his childhood to create the outlook for the otherworldly plane. Having created The Void in the game we felt like it had to be used for more than just a boss fight.
The biggest breakthrough with The Void was the idea to use it for fast travel. Originally our fast travel points were just big black monoliths that teleported you around, but we came up with a much more organic way of traversing long distances.
The original fast travel point was just a black monolith. We later changed it into a machine that is activated with DOOMBLADE.
We had an enemy in the game we called the Escaper. Once you tried to attack it, it started escaping so that your attack would keep going until the Escaper finally stopped so your attack could connect. We used Escapers to lead the player to places otherwise out of reach or when we wanted to make traversal faster. So why not use a new version of The Escaper in The Void where nothing can get in your way to handle fast travel? And thus, The Voidborne was created.
On the left, the original Escaper later to be known as Feeble Fleebell. On the right, the Voidborne.
Traveling with Voidbornes worked great. As we tested the game and traversed great distances in The Void, one thing became clear quite fast: if we had another dimension at our disposal and we were doing a Metroidvania, surely this couldn’t be used just for fast travel and a single boss fight? So much space that could be used for plot points, secrets, and maybe even an additional power-up.
Things started to come together as Andrew got on board to write a proper story and lore for our game. The connection between The Void and DOOMBLADE was recreated in a much better way than we had originally envisioned it. Andrew also came up with The Locksmith - an important character in the story regarding The Void. I’d love to go into so much more about The Void, but we are reaching spoiler territory pretty hard, so I won’t expand on the lore more than this.
There was a point in development in which we had ideas for even more dimensions than two with all sorts of interdimensional mechanics involved. However, those plans turned out to be far too ambitious and that’s probably for the better - the game would have most likely become a huge mess if we went down that path. Extra dimensions would have also made The Void far less interesting. Instead, it ended up being quite a special place.
Stay tuned for further updates and we greatly appreciate all of your support!
DOOMBLADE
Iceberg Interactive