The Robot Bar is your starting point to the world of Sente. And as Sente is a game made by robots, for robots, you’ll need to find a way to walk amongst them, improvise and find a clever disguise to take part in the latest game taking the digital world by storm.
In 2019, Sente was a concept brought to life on a blank board, no table, no bar, and certainly no robots.
Originally, Sente was set in a void in a nameless location. Robot figures loomed in the darkness, merely disembodied arms manipulating the screens. Far from the vibrant and bustling bar you’ll see in the game.
When in development, the team originally didn’t feel like Sente needed a theme. After all, games like Chess don’t have a theme… or do they? After going back to the drawing board and doing deeper research, it seems even the classics are themed around something. In Chess, for instance, you have Knights, Kings, Queens, so Sente needed that extra something that would set it apart.
The first robot was actually downloaded from an asset store as a placeholder to see if the theme fit, but the developers loved it so much that robots are now a staple of Sente’s gameplay and lore.
The idea that Sente was a game invented by robots for other robots to play was always in the background of development, but had yet to reach full fruition. A lot of the lore and background of Sente was waiting to be fleshed out!
The inclusion of that first model in early development really sparked a desire to evolve that theme. Why are robots playing this game? Where are the humans? And why is Jade trying to play the game and impersonate the robots…An idea which came from one of the developers’ own daughter, by the way!
After discovering those details - that we’ll save for a future Dev Log - the next step was figuring out where these Robots would play such a game. That’s where the Robot Bar came in, a busy environment where players could interact with the patrons and each one would bring a new twist to the game. And the different modes for the tutorial, the puzzles, and the classic Sente experience could all be represented by a new challenger.
Sente is set on Earth, in the not too distant future, in an unknown futuristic city that will feel familiar to fans of sci-fi. The exterior of which, was actually inspired by Teclopolis - a short about a city that’s made from keyboards - and Coruscant from Star Wars.
However, in one of the original concepts for Sente, we planned to set the game in space! Humans had been confined to cryopods and during periods of long travel, the robots would be playing Sente. They need to keep themselves occupied somehow!
As you’ve seen in the demo of Sente, the Robot Bar has different areas to it and you’ve been able to explore the ground floor, which was always intended as the main hub for the game.
Right now we’re hard at work on the second floor of the Robot Bar, putting in some new challenges for Jade, culminating in one final task, the Tournament! As well as a few other surprises we’ll share in a future dev log.
Sente is proceeding along really well and we’re really excited for you to play the full game later this year!
We look forward to sharing more about Sente soon!
Try the demo and join the Sente Discord to let us know what you think about the game.