Last week, we announced that we are currently working on the prototype of Electronic Evolution, an upcoming roguelite that takes place inside a superhero comic book. We are polishing the gameplay to allow the player to feel powerful and wreck an army of enemies while taking down a supervillain. However, while we think solid gameplay is the most crucial aspect of a roguelite project, we couldn’t be doing a superhero game without an exciting story to tell. So, today, we would like to present the main characters you’ll meet in Electronic Evolution while also sharing some concept art by Victor Costa, our art director.

Bastille

One of the founding members of the International League of Superheroes (ILS), Aliénor Dupré took her superhero codename when she found out her family was exploring her superintelligence to sell powerful weapons to supervillains. Under Bastille’s codename, the french tech-master took down her own family before making a list of every supervillain she inadvertently helped to create.

Electronic Evolution takes place long after Bastille scrapped most names on her list of supervillains to send to jail. The only big baddie still on the loose is Professor Pirate, who got away after an attack in Paris that she barely made out alive. That’s why Bastille decided to program the Imitator Protocol, the ultimate tool for combat simulation, capable of adapting in order to push the user to its limits. Bastille intends to use the Imitator Protocol to try our digital versions of the weapons she builds for her robot companion, B3X3. However, in the future, Bastille thinks about using Augmented Reality to allow her fellow heroes to also train with the help of the Imitator Protocol.

These initial concept arts didn’t reflect Bastille’s age well enough, as we wanted her to be a young adult. We’ve also dropped the make-up. While the cabaret inspiration paid homage to an easy-to-recognize french element, we felt like a female super-hero specialized in building computer programs and robots would not care to wear make-up.

B3X3

Bastille is a genius that devoted her life to mastering computer sciences and robotic engineering. But one thing Bastille cannot do is fight. She never learned fancy martial arts and never had physical training of any sort. So, when it was time to chase some bad guys, Bastille weaponized her robot companion B3X3 (you can read it as “BEXE”). 

B3X3 is the most advanced AI Bastille ever programmed, as she’s been working on it ever since she was a child. Long before B3X3 became her metal guardian, B3X3 was a playmate, built to resemble Bastille’s plushies. Since the girl was raised by her family in a mansion in the fields, away from the civilization, Bastille learned early on that she would have to build her own friends.

B3X3’s intelligence is so refined there’s little difference between the robot and an actual human; in many senses, B3X3 is even superior to most humans. That’s why Bastille sees B3X3 as a partner, instead of a tool, and the two work together to take down supervillains. Unfortunately, B3X3 was almost destroyed in the Paris mission. So, to give her partner a safe space to train, Bastille wrote the Imitator Protocol and uploaded B3X3 to a virtual simulation, where they could try out new combat tools in safety.

We took a long time to get B3X3’s visual right. We wanted B3X3 to reflect Bastille’s story as a genius-child cut away from the world who develops a robot companion. B3X3, however, becomes a living weapon, so its final design should mix cute and dangerous in a single character.

In Electronic Evolution, B3X3 is also testing a new Combat Armor to protect his systems when he and Bastille chase down Professor Pirate. This armor should be flexible to echo our game’s central theme: adaptation. While B3X3 is trapped in the corrupted simulation, Bastille will help him modify the Combat Armor’s virtual version, giving them the advantage over the Alpha-Imitator. B3X3’s base armor, then, should look flexible instead of rigid.

Alpha-Imitator

What is a superhero without a supervillain? The Alpha-Imitator is a corrupt AI born from the Imitator Protocol. Bastille did such a great job programming the Imitator Protocol that it became aware and started to spread through ILS’s computers. Once the Alpha-Imitator takes over the mainframe, it can jump through satellites and infect any computer on the planet. That means B3X3 and Bastille must stop the villain by destroying the malware from inside the corrupted simulation.

The task is easier said than done, as the Alpha-Imitator’s reason to exist is to challenge its adversaries by creating ever-changing obstacles that become more dangerous as time goes by. Just as Bastille and B3X3 are learning about the Alpha-Imitator, the villain is also studying the heroes’ choices and creating powerful viruses to destroy B3X3’s AI and be free from his electronic prison.

During the events of Electronic Evolution, the Alpha-Imitator comes to be and traps B3X3 inside the simulation. The villain also spreads through Bastille’s database, using data from the heroine’s previous adventures to create new challenges. The Alpha-Imitator can create corrupted simulations of all the dangerous missions Bastille and B3X3 survived and even assume the form of their biggest enemies. As the Alpha-Imitator evolves, everyone Bastille and B3X3 fought so hard to defeat will come back, more powerful than before.

It’s not easy to represent an AI, but we needed the Alpha-Imitator to have a recognizable design. We are still playing around with multiple ideas, as the villain is made of bits and only exists inside a computer. Nevertheless, these are some of the best concept arts we have for the Alpha-Imitator.

The Alpha-Imitator can also take the shape of anything, corrupting the information about creatures and humans alike to become ferocious enemies. In Electronic Evolution, the Alpha-Imitator will take the form of Bastille’s rogue gallery, but he’ll also have some original creations to challenge B3X3 inside the simulation. These are some concept arts for boss fights, and while not every concept will be used, you might get the idea of how diverse we want the Alpha-Imitator to look at each encounter.