Dystopia

Partner studio: Puny Human

Concept

A cyberpunk team-based first-person shooter with a dual-layer design: players fight through the physical map while teammates jack into a parallel cyberspace layer through terminals, hacking objectives that alter the physical battlefield in real time. Punks against corporate security, across twelve maps with implant-based loadouts.

Requirement

Two separate mod teams merged to build a total conversion for Half-Life 2 that could stand alongside commercial shooters — and then had to sustain it through years of updates on volunteer effort and community goodwill alone.

Approach

The merged team shipped a demo in September 2005 and a full release in February 2007, then continued large regular updates for years afterwards.

When the senior developers left for industry positions, the remaining junior developers reorganized the team — and that reorganization became the studio.

Delivery scope

• Game design and systems design
• Gameplay programming
• Level design
• 3D modeling, animation and texture art
• Audio implementation
• Live operations and community management

Results

• Demo released 10 September 2005; version 1.0 released 23 February 2007; free on Steam
• 85% positive across 1,137 Steam reviews, with recent reviews at 90% — the studio's best-received product by user sentiment
• Independent Games Festival finalist; featured in PC Gamer
• Directly produced the company: Puny Human was formed 28 August 2007 by the remaining Dystopia developers
• Servers kept operational after the studio wound down

Engine: Source Engine.