Hitbox Team, the developer behind the claimed indie plattformer Dustforce released last year, have returned with a new project titled Spire, an FPS about “ascending a monolithic tower of unknown origin.”

According to Hitbox the internals of the tower are ever-changing: it’ll be a different adventure every time.“Environments and the transitions between them tell a story. In Spire, we want to keep this in mind in order to create a procedural level generation that has flow and character. If the generator has created a dangerous, frantic sequence with lots of combat, it might think to then generate a scene with lower intensity to better control the emotional arc of the experience. In this way, Spire will generate intentional level flow instead of randomized environments. The resolution of the generation is very high: there are no premade rooms or scripted events. Everything from the placement of the books on a shelf to the shape of the walls and floors will be generated with intention”reads the description on Hitbox’s website.

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We want Spire to exude a sense of exploration and mystery, but also promote flashy and skillful play. In our discussions about game design, we tend to agree that the “best” way to play a game should look and feel cool. We had a similar philosophy in Dustforce, where we aimed to have the most efficient play style overlap with the most stylish. On Spire, one of our goals since the beginning has been to create an FPS movement system that feels snappy like Dustforce, incorporating walljumps, wall sliding, and other advanced techniques. The level generation will result in scenes that demand mastery of all sorts of skills, not just running and aiming” said Woodley Nye, Artist/game designer for Hitbox Team.

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In Spire players will also have access to an unusual variety of items in the game. A huge part of the mastery will be figuring out novel combinations of the left-hand and right-hand items to overcome different challenges. Some items will be movement focused, some will change the environment, and some will be for protecting or healing yourself.

Hitbox is well into the development of Spire, and in the near future they plan on discussing in depth our gameplay and aesthetic design choices, as well as details about technical issues behind the game.