Devlog #001: How it all Begone!
Hello World!
My name is Tomáš. I am an animator. I am also one of two cofounders of Tandemi- the studio making Begone Beast! The other cofounder is Clarissa (my partner, my wife, and programmer extraordinaire!). And…
We are absolutely thrilled to share a new trailer with you that was just shown at Gamescom!
But we are even MORE thrilled to announce we are headed to Early Access in 2025. It’s great to finally start sharing what we’ve been working on! Nevertheless, the MOST thrilling thing of all is that YOU are here reading this. So awesome! We will be regularly posting updates here every few weeks so stick around if you want to learn more!
In the Begonning
First lets talk about how the idea for Begone Beast came about. Clarissa and I love going to haunted houses. We go each year to Halloween Horror Nights with a bunch of friends & fam. The group of us turns into this big bundle of scared, giggling, screaming scaredy-cats eagerly running from every fake chainsaw and masked madman – only stopping to stuff ourselves with ice cream and hot dogs. It’s weirdly wholesome (especially considering all the fake blood and gore). It’s precisely this odd spooky wholesomeness that sparked our journey to make Begone Beast.
At first the game was just a collection of inspiration and references. We wanted something full of delightful silliness, but grounded in some really scary places. We wanted a Luigi’s Mansion as if it were created by Stephen King.
As a game developer, it’s all work and all play!
It needed to be scary… but kinda fun-scary with lots of snack breaks. Something equal parts Overcooked! and Left 4 Dead. Topped off with the earnest wonder of Calvin and Hobbes… and a bit of that surreal autumnal coziness in Over the Garden Wall. And so we poured all these inspirations into a big cauldron and saw if anything sparked
Our First Prototype!
It wasn’t until we made our first prototype that we felt the spark. In it you played as a little bear boy looking for ghosts and ghouls. It was a glimpse at something we wanted to keep working on. We called that first bear-bones prototype “Ghost Patrol”. It wasn’t much, but there was something special about it.
Our first playable prototype “Ghost Patrol”
This short demo would eventually turn into the game we are building today! It was a creepy-cute mix that we just couldn’t stop thinking about.
“Bear Boy” would later become Benny- the first playable character in Begone Beast
Finding Our Lead Character
There was a really specific turning point when the game really started to take shape. As a bit of a joke, I decided to try and create a playable character based on my fellow cofounder Clarissa herself. They say to make what you know, right? Well I had known Clarissa almost 10 years at that point. Her exaggerated expressions, her brash boldness, and her propensity to scream. But I wasn’t prepared for how much I would love playing as her.
“Ate” pronounced “Ah-tay” has accumulated a whole array of custom expressions.
Well it turned out that basing a character on someone I knew was actually really effective. I immediately knew how she should move, attack, talk, and scream! We had found our main character and named her “Ate”(pronounced “Ah-tay”). And while Clarissa may have been the inspiration, Ate soon became a reflection of Clarissa’s whole extended family.
More updates coming soon!
After we made Ate, the other characters started to fall into place. We had our starting roster of Begoners! And so we turned our focus to the cast of monsters and BEASTS… but we’ll leave that for another time.
If you’ve read this far, you have my thanks. We’d love to have you join playtesting once we get started. Stay-tuned for more updates! And as always [deep breath] AAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
- Tomáš
