Hello everyone! I’d like to announce something that I had been doing behind the scenes for the last while. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I hope that it is a welcome surprise!
I had been secretly converting Out Of Hell into a non-Hentai visual novel and I am finally ready to show the results. In this day and age, I find that the game industry is too saturated with horror games and far too focused on violence.
As an independent developer, I have an obligation to take my games in directions that the mainstream will not.
Therefore, I proudly present:
In this game, you take on the role of Hiro Takahashimoto, a charismatic art dealer who is known for his icy-cool demeanor and utter indifference to the shameless sexual advances of his secretary; a quirky, big-chested 1,500 year-old celestial being in human form.
Join him as he navigates the scandal-ridden, cut-throat realm of antique art restoration, while contending with the impending invasion of General Yujio and his evil Tentazoid army, AND strives to win back the love of his highschool sweetheart before she moves to America!
Warning: MAY CONTAIN HENTAI
Alright, now it’s done! I was really happy with the relative ease and time it took to optimize and touch-up this map. I accomplished the mood I was after and so now I will be moving onto the second-half of this sequence: The Blood Marshes (the hellish plane that is linked to this area)
The visuals for that map are pretty much final already and the real work lies in bug-testing the encounters and boss fight and such! I’ll post a video of Donovan interacting with some of the NPC’s there in the next update!
But that’s the whole point of it all, is to show the contrast between the two sides so that the horrific stuff makes the beautiful stuff stand out and the beautiful stuff makes the horrific more hellish!
I’m down to one cutscene remaining on this map, a handful of military vehicles to scatter about and that should be it for this map! It’s been the fastest cleanup of any level so far (maybe a little over a week of work)
…it almost looks like a deer hunting simulator at times! I’ve started to clean up the outdoor maps that take place further away from the city and the thought had occured to me to replace all the zombies with deer and see if anyone notices. XD
I hope everyone is having a good 2025 so far! I meant to post much earlier, but there ended up being so much new to report that I kind of lost track on what to report! I’ve been on quite a roll with the progress that I just didn’t bother concentrating on the updates anymore!
First, a great preview video was created by Jonathan Sheridan that contains some insights into the project! I made some footage for him that isn’t anywhere else, so head on over and give him a thumbs up!
I’ve already started on the Outskirts/Blood Marshes map and cleanup has been 1000 times faster than the Grinwood Police Department map! (that is the most complex map in the game) Since then, I’ve tightened up a lot of game mechanics, I made 50% more monsters that haven’t been alluded to yet (no screens or info, no one knows what these are), did a great deal of bug fixes and just more things that I can’t even remember now.
When I first opened this map up to be cleaned/optimized, the visuals were a little different than I had left them. I made many changes and improvements to the post-processing, lighting system and materials since I “finished” this map a long time ago and so there were visual discrepnacies.
Some other silly little errors started popping up like below:
Since everything was so bright and blue before, I didn’t see the fine white outline on some of the alpha materials. Crap on a stick!
I also had to fix a bunch of foliage materials because I had a problem with distance assets showing up far too bright because they lacked shadow casting (for reasons of optimization, distance objects don’t receive or cast dynamic shadows) so I had to find a way to hide that, which I did with a couple of workarounds)
I also forgot to mention earlier that I brought in some weapons from the mod version! The pistol, axe, crowbar and machete can all be found at certain places. There is also an armor item you can get that gives you a similar uniform to the mod. I thought it would be a neat nod to the fan community! 🙂
There’s been an influx of new fans to the Youtube and Discord channels, and so I would like to extend a big hellish welcome to all of you! I’ve also (finally) created a public Steam page so that you can follow the game and be notified once the trailer and/or demo hits.
You can find the page here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2082530/Out_Of_Hell/
Please keep in mind that I will be updating the Steam page as the game nears completion and the screenshots currently posted are taken from the beta version. Those screens will be replaced over time with newer content!
I really wish I could show you a video encounter of this thing, but I already spoil so damn much and I want you to be genuinely terrified by this creature!
These images are from a “Boss” encounter where you’re stalked by something known as a “Gorehound” and after two weeks of tweaking the visuals, ambience, sound effects (that was super important) and game mechanics, I think I finally nailed it and it all turned out to be really freaky!
I wanted to go into more detail about this entire map, such as my thought process behind the visuals of the monster(s), the contrast in environments, the logic of the setup and eventual payoff of the horror elements, etc. but there’s just too much to talk about.
I’ve decided to hold off on that and save it for the Dev Journal later on, so you’ll just have to suck it up and take this image dump instead! 😉
…also happens to be the most tedious! I’ve been going through the maps and tying up all the loose ends, fixing whatever bugs I find and polishing or optimizing whatever I think needs it. It’s mostly visual stuff that I’m working on at this point, as I’ve already fleshed out all the mechanics and fixed all the uncovered bugs, thanks to the efforts of the testing team.
I ended up re-lighting certain places in some of the maps and added other little subtle effects that you might not notice right away, but I think the mind picks it up and adds to the overall picture.
As always, I’m still trucking along! 😀
LONG NGUYEN | Digital Artist & Game Designer 