Hexile has been branded with a theme and motif!  Well, not without running in circles for a few weeks.

Originally the project was code-named “Augmentor” and early chicken-scratch had it wrapped with a futuristic, celestial feel with industrial overtones.

The first official draft phases surrounding the creative of the game shifted to an Egyptian, “Luxor”-like theme.  Set to be staged near Egyptian ruins, the working project name became “iRuin”, and early music drafts came shortly after.

Not wanting to be seen as a Luxor theme knock-off, we quickly moved away from the Egyptian/Middle East theme and explored more of a South American tribal theme.  Well, congratulations, now we’re like Zuma.  We loved the tribal concept, and the early music drafts were also promising, but we had to have originality in the creative department, since the game concepts were.

The epiphany came to us after we went through a deep whiteboard session.  What did we like about our previous themes?  What are the common elements? Futurist, Industrial, Metallic, Weathered Stone.  Well, that’s essentially retro-futurist.  And that’s steampunk.

We won’t go into the details behind the steampunk movement.  At least not in this post.  But the fact stands that it’s an overlooked motif across many applications in the App Store (we counted three..and one to come maybe?).  Some people don’t understand it, or have never heard of it - but that’s OK.  It looks good.