ABOUT XENITH
The idea for Xenith was simple—develop a scalable scifi shooter in Unreal Engine with two warring factions and expandable lore.
The reality is much more complicated.
Xenith is the result of HatchFox Studios, a 10-person team working across 4 different timezones. The prototype is active, but demo production is on-hold until team schedules clear up.
In the meantime, here’s a bit of the work so far.
MY ROLE
I joined at the height of concept chaos.
There were snatches of an aesthetic and story, but nothing had been nailed down as most of the team were developers or 3D modelers.
Soon after joining, the team leader handed me the creative reins for narrative direction.
IDENTITY
Xenith was originally called “Project Athena” with a similar brand identity to EA’s Anthem. I wanted to change that and began developing an alternate set of creative concepts to iterate within the world framework.
The game was no longer a gritty, sterile action shooter. Instead I drew from retrofuturistic influences to craft a hybrid look that extended from logo through to concept art.
OLD
NARRATIVE
Whew, this was a doozy. There were five working versions of the world when I came aboard. Working with the team leader to trim away the fat, we whittled it down to one core idea that I developed into a workable framework.
This included:
- Lore
- Overall campaign path
- Flavor text (weapons, inventory, etc.)
IDENTITY
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CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
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NARRATIVE
The following is a snippet from a document outlining the overall story direction along with some in-game context as to lore, species, and planetary structure.
