In the mid 90's, my friend and I grew up playing in the woods of northern Kentucky, inspired by the golden age of RPG video games, Tolkien lore, and intimidating tabletop RPGs his older brother would game-master us through.

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When his brother was not around, we would grab a D20 and paper, sending each other through the others imagination, inventing the rules as we played. We dreamed up too many places and characters to recount, but some stuck forever.

 

The world of Devanis became the world I worked out. I drew everything I could imagine of that world. We worked on many ideas between his stories and mine and we would always bounce them off one another, poking at the logic of illogical things.

 

I always escaped into my art, and my art was mostly Devanis; this world where I could create creatures and plants, heroes and villains, adventure, and heartbreak. I could tell my own story through developing this world.

 

I kept Devanis working as a side-project throughout my life, and since the Sega Genesis, I have always wanted to make game graphics. Several years after college, I found work as a game artist for two indie-game companies in Florida, and worked alongside very skilled artists, animators, programmers, and designers. Afterwards, I just couldn’t hold it in anymore, it was time for me to bring Devanis to light. 

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Three years of actual concept art, game design, world building, and writing later...

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In 2019 My older brother stepped from the mist of industrial programming and his NAVY experience to begin coding BECKONED. Showing him how I wanted to craft the game, he drilled out the test quickly with stability. The game-art poured out of me alongside his progress learning Unreal 4 Blueprint system and building his first game. The spare-time between us two developers created the current Prototype as of September 2020. I could not have done it without him. We are aware further polish is needed in many areas, but we are humbled by the experience as a whole and proud to have everyone play it! 

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We are beginners making a high-def, hand-animated, cinematic, 20-hour epic JRPG using Unreal4 Blueprint engine. We will be pushing the engines 2D capabilities to the max with the large hand-drawn sprites, and creating a new visual style lighting these robust assets in full flip-book, animated glory. By mixing these techniques with luminous special effects and an original score, BECKONED demonstrate how Unreal can empower people to create whatever they dream of.

 

We both host BECKONED Development Weekly Stream on YouTube every Friday @ 8pm Eastern, and we have a blast with everyone that shows up!

 

As a small studio, we created a place where we could interact with a community and build a following of fun personalities and insights.