Hi,

I started development on a new game from the Chromosome Evil Franchise.

It won't be a direct sequel but rather a small prequel of sorts with different mechanics mixed with the RTS combat part.
I am going for a Diegetic UI design combined with easy 3 choices per day type of gameplay but all choices must have a big impact.
This will probably also be the final entry from this franchise.



First concept:




Team
Popa Cristian Manuel - artwork, game design, marketing, balance, team management, testing, level design
Sergey Dovganovsky - programming, animation, testing, balance
Developed under 16 BIT NIGHTS studio






Gentlemen  

In the meantime, I start to decide on the color palette and final polish adjustments on the game design.

This is a critical part of the game because here the player will spend half the gameplay time so I try to polish it as much as possible.

Some more progress.

I will try to keep all details minimal on the environment and go high-detail on interactive components.

Made some more progress

just added more polish and also additional visuals for different screen ratios

And the first iteration of the parallax effect

I reduced the speeds and added some adjustments.

Also my partner started adding the rollovers and tooltips I made + a mechanical arm for unit selection.

UPDATE

I am trying to also integrate the inventory menu within the War room interface.

Each slot will provide the player with a minimum of 2 choices and a maximum of 3 choices for upgrade equipment.
There will be no perfect build and the goal here is to create a unique build on each playthrough providing freedom to the player and more ways to play.

Please bare with me, the main target here is to have low gameplay time, around 3-max5 hours of gameplay but HUGE replaibility value

Working now on the camp choices and visuals

Animation I made for camp screen

More encounters

Context (mockup) 

Timelapse of cutscene artwork

And final with full interface

New scene progression

I finally managed to finish all the intro cinematic panels.

Now it's time to add animate them.

The goal is the same: MAXIMUM Atmospheric value with MINIMAL colors and MINIMAL details

Started work on animating some of these panels,  we still need to make some polish but it's almost there.

And as far as progression goes this will have a solid combo, included here it will be: the intro cinematics, The teaser trailer content, the tutorial, the interactive start new game choices.

Helicopter interior 

I finally got a trailer:

5 minutes long :)))))

and ofc we decided on the title : Welcome Back, Commander

Good news!

We just received a Steam Deck via the Steam hardware request developer program.

Now I just need to make sure this beauty reaches my partner who deals with the programming.

We also remade the game`s capsule

New Boss animation:

https://v-2.gjcdn.net/public-data/transcoded-media/554/178/34657928/900x900-uhev... 

Welcome Back, Commander just appeared in the upcoming strategy indie games video from perafilozof

https://youtu.be/X7ja9rNqKZk?si=S00f3m9OGT4IYUV7&t=1149

We managed to implement the first 5 scenarios for the Defcon 5 stage.


Some new additions:

We added a Blood sample mechanic inspired by the movie "The Thing"



How it works?
One of the civilians that you must rescue is infected and if you try to save him with a soldier or engineer he will transform into a monster and attack you but if you try to save him with a medic you will immediately identify the infected and you will not trigger him.

Another new mechanic is the infected stash devouring flesh.
They will ignore the player units while eating but if you attack any of them they will all rush toward your strike team.



Also, we added tons of easter eggs and fan service.
For example one of the early possible scenarios will be an easter egg from Resident Evil aka Kendo Gun Shop.

And much more, we added custom scenes during exploration such as helicopters passing by, civilians running and trying to escape, car crashes, and much, much more.



OK time to go back to work.

Hello Commanders,


I am dropping some news from behind the curtain and as the title says: we are preparing a Demo for Steam and Itch.io (and maybe Gamejolt too but I am not sure considering the low visibility).

The first part of the demo will include the intro cinematics, the tutorial, the interactive start of new game choices + the main gameplay of both the management command room and Defcon 5 RTS scenarios.

The start new game screen.

We combined the start of new game choices with interactivity and story elements in a unique mix that we hope will be enjoyable for you.
The main goal here is the MAXIMUM atmospheric value.

So each new game you will have a variety of choices in order to better customize your playthrough and make it as unique as possible each time.
- Enter your name(will affect some dialogues)
- Choose the game difficulty (we currently have 5 stages of difficulty planned but for the purpose of the demo we will only have 2). This difficulty setting affects the number of days you have and some enemy stats.
- Choose Commando strike team units, your starting units. This pool will also become larger as you unlock more units based on achievement(we invest very much this time on the re-pliability factor)
- Starting resources
- Choose Start bonus items (these will affect some special stats and special game mechanics)
For example, if you pick a scanner you will have this scanner mechanic during boss fights:






We also plan to have one boss fight included in the demo.

Here is a hint: it will happen in the new sewers environment that we just created:

Timeline: This coming week we will make the demo available for everyone with lvl 3 and above on our Discord community for a private beta test session and next month the demo will be publicly available during the Steam Next Fest.





OK time to go back to work.

Want to support us? Join our Discord.

This will be a fast update since we are really low on time, lots of things do fix, and lots of things to adjust for the upcoming Demo.


So, firstly we are going to say that this game will also have rough-like elements through the achievement-reward system but because of the deadline I am not sure we will be able to implement them in the demo.

We also made serious polish to the command room visuals with some extra shadings and added new mechanics.
We will probably update the screenshots from the store page a bit later because you know TIMEEEE





"Welcome Back, Commander" logo has also been updated.
For this new key art, we got a lot of help from the Strain Tactics developer.





We are also working on a new trailer that is heavily focused on showing the gameplay.





OK time to go back to work

Gameplay Reveal Trailer is now LIVE

We released the demo on steam and now we work for the itch io version

Just released "Welcome Back, Commander" on itch!

https://16bitnights.itch.io/welcome-back-commander

Hello  Commanders,

More news, we hit new milestones.

We managed to finish all maps for Defcon 4 and now we started implementing them. The first one was added yesterday and here is the reveal:

Yeap, it is a library.. Because the game content will be short we are focusing on delivering high-quality in our environments and player experience. What does this mean? Well, it means that each scenario will have a special mechanic/gimmick. For example, this Librabry map has storm weather effects that will prevent the player from doing hit & run so on this map you must first survive until the storm ends.

Oh, we also added some hot interactive cutscenes within the scenario itself and many easter eggs.

Talking about the storm,  here are the new storm visual effects rain + thunder.

And today we added the Subway map.

The Subway unique twist is that you can use the alternative way out with some penalties but if you wait for the train to arrive a new exit path will be unlocked and you can leave without penalties but others a catch. When the train arrives it will have unwanted passengers.

In conclusion, each environment is tailored to provide a certain experience. 

OK time to go back to work, we need to finish Defcon 4 this month. If this week we manage to implement all scenarios then next week we will start adding custom random encounters for this Defcon as well + a special scenario and full-screen cutscenes.

If you want to support us you can join our Discord and share some gifs with 90thies action heroes, "GET TO THE CHOOOOOOPAAAA!"

Discord invite: https://discord.gg/ak5zXQxR7D

best regards,
Cristi P. - 16 BIT NIGHTS

Just hit a serious Milestone on Steam

Experimental news everyone,

So, a couple of weeks ago we met the solo dev from "Real Heroes Studio", he had a game called "Desolated District" in which we saw potential, and after some ideas exchange, we decided to help him out in his endeavors.

This will be an experimental collaboration for "16BitNights". 

We will contribute to "Real Heroes Studio" with Marketing consultancy, environmental storytelling design, and some other minor investments.

If the experiment will turn out to have a positive outcome then we will consider investing in other small indie developers in the future.

You can find this magical open-world-survival-crafting game on steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2454070/Desolated_District/ and we hope to have it released in Q2 of 2025.

The game vertical slice was also uploaded here on Itch.io and can be found here :  https://real-heroes-studio.itch.io/desolated-district

A few words about the game:

Desolated District is an Open-World Survival Crafting game set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. Scavenge for resources, craft essential tools, build your base and battle deadly threats as you explore a sprawling, decaying city inspired by the Kowloon Walled City.

And here is an example of environment storytelling. 

Step by step you are going to learn what happened to the happy folks of the desolated city while you try to escape its grasp.

I never did this type of collab so if any of you got any tips for me let me know