How Unity helped Easy Trigger craft the incredible aesthetic of Huntdown

We examine the way a small team of Swedish developers created a bombastic 2D shooter with the help of Unity [View this email in your browser]( You have been sent a sponsored message via GamesIndustry.biz, in association with Unity How Unity helped Easy Trigger craft the incredible aesthetic of Huntdown We examine the way a small team of Swedish developers created a bombastic 2D shooter with the help of Unity Huntdown is a fascinating contradiction. On one hand, it's a retro-inspired 2D run-and-gun game in the vein of Contra, bringing to mind nostalgia-tinged visions of Arnold Schwarzenegger stomping around Los Angeles with shades and a shotgun. However, [Huntdown]( brings this genre roaring into the future with stunning, hand crafted visuals and animations, alongside smart tweaks to gameplay which add a tactical layer to combat: no easy task for a five-person games studio . Development started in 2016 with the team building a custom engine within [Unity](. Tommy Gustafsson, the co-founder of Swedish studio Easy Trigger, wore many different hats as director, working on the game's art, graphics, animation, story, music, sound design and voice direction. Huntdown was created as a love letter to the games and films Easy Trigger grew up with, trying to capture the dark essence of classics like Escape from New York, Blade Runner, Robocop, Starship Troopers, and many, many more. "Huntdown [looks] and plays like a '90s game, but the content, the world we are building feels like a sci-fi vision of the early 1980s or late '70s," Gustafsson tells us. "These dark movies from the '80s, most of them were black or set at night, like The Running Man, Cobra and Blade Runner. Those movies are rarely seen in daylight, so we wanted to capture that grit." To successfully pull off a retro look, Easy Trigger limited its colour palette to evoke the Atari 2600. "We had 160 colours at first, then we had to add a few new [shades] for some darker tones. We kept it really limited to have the authentic 16-bit arcade game style," Easy Trigger co-founder and lead programmer on Huntdown, Andreas Rehnberg explains. However, Easy Trigger wanted to iterate on the classic games that inspired them. Huntdown brings various quality-of-life updates to the 2D run-and-gun formula, such as implementing more generous checkpoints. Gameplay has also been tweaked for modern audiences: a cover system is complemented by slick movement mechanics, adding a layer of intensity and strategy to combat as you weave your way through neon-drenched obstacle courses. "The gameplay has a more modern take because we really wanted it to play smooth and fast, and to be as generous as possible," Gustafsson says. "It makes it more tactical and you don't always have to jump to avoid bullets and projectiles." [To read full article, click here]( [Facebook icon]( [Twitter icon]( [LinkedIn icon]( Copyright (C) 2021 ReedPop. All rights reserved. You got this email because you signed up to an account on GamesIndustry.biz and agreed to receive promotional emails from our partners. Our mailing address is: ReedPop 1-6 Grand ParadeBrighton, East Sussex BN2 9QB United Kingdom [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe]( [Privacy Policy]( | [Cookie Policy](