Systems Online: First Steps of the War Engine
Devlog #002 — Sunday, 23:00. Log initiated. Systems stable.
The process begins to take shape
New ideas keep falling into the gaps of the day, and every sketch pushes the visual identity of the game a little further. This early stage was meant to stay absolutely secret… but I decided to open the process. An open devlog forces me to document what I do, to keep the thread alive when daily life pulls me in every direction, and to keep the spark of the project burning.
I work as a freelance artist for different companies, and even then, personal projects keep appearing — projects that insist on being born. This is one of them. And, like any large project, I needed someone to bounce ideas with.
The creative reactor
That’s where Mr. Shawn comes in: a natural-born world generator. I’ve known him for many years. I still remember seeing his idea sketchbook for the first time and being stunned at how easily he could fire off twenty concepts from a single word. A fan of Warhammer, miniatures, 3D, and boardgames… basically a creativity reactor. Sharing this plan with him was inevitable.
Long before talking about this project, Shawn had shown me a cutaway drawing of a massive robot, along with a gameplay explanation that burned itself into my mind. We both share the same weakness for colossal bipedal tanks, so the connection was instant.
And so, one dawn that stretched into morning, we found ourselves riffing on the first steps of the War Engine. I was running on a dangerous blend: Pacific Rim, Evangelion (series and films), Matrix 3, MechWarrior gameplays, and a mental library full of metal and gunpowder references. With all that in the mix, we began to imagine what this game could be — and above all, what we did NOT want to repeat from existing mech games. Not as criticism, but as a starting point to push toward something different… and maybe, someday, even take it into VR.
Shawn adds something crucial to the project: beyond his relentless ability to generate ideas, he has an artistic eye, historical knowledge, 3D experience, and a 3D printer ready to spit out prototypes. That combo at 4 AM is basically a mech factory in berserk mode. Once the models start taking shape, we’ll print miniature versions of each mech to have a physical prototype on the table. Touching things changes everything: scale decisions, silhouette, gameplay feel. Nothing replaces a real figure.
The story is still in progress, but we already have a solid foundation that we’ll be sharing soon. Life slows things down sometimes, but in the distance the workshop remains lit. The welder’s glow keeps stitching piece by piece, idea by idea, while this hundreds-of-tons giant waits for its turn to step into the world and burn gunpowder.
