Pre-alpha, and a trailer · Rally Mortis diary

Five months ago this diary started with a hearse sketched in a notebook and a sentence we could not take back. Today the game has a website, a mailing list and a trailer, and we are a little nervous about all three.

The pre-alpha trailer. Gameplay captured in engine; story art from the game. Sound on, ideally.

What pre-alpha means

Rally Mortis is in pre-alpha. That means the game exists and can be played from the first scene to the end of chapter one, but almost nothing in it is final. Textures, cars, voices, music, the interface, the balance of every race: all of it is still moving. Some of what is in the trailer will look different when you play it. Some of it will not be there at all, and something better will be in its place. That is the deal, and it is why every clip on this site carries a little pre-alpha label.

How we cut the trailer

We gave ourselves a simple rule: show the game, not a promise. Every shot of driving in the trailer is captured in the engine from the pre-alpha build, at full speed or slowed down, never repainted. The story moments come from the painted panels that play between races.

Then we cut it to the main title. At a hundred and one beats a minute it is a procession, not a sprint, so the trailer opens slowly, with the house, the family and the will, and only starts to run when the money is mentioned. After that, almost every cut lands on a beat. Towards the end the cuts come twice a beat, which is about as fast as a funeral march can be persuaded to go.

The executor, Ambrose Crane, holds up a silver urn — The prize: Mr Crane holds up the urn. Inside, instructions.

We wrote no new dialogue for the trailer. Every spoken word in it is from the game: the will, Vee, Pell and the deceased himself.

The prize is my urn. Inside, instructions. Do make some noise. I shall be listening.

What happens next

Chapter one goes on being polished until it is something we would be happy for you to play. Then it goes to testers.
Chapter two, Verdance and the twins, is being built.
This diary carries on. More sketches, more wrong turns, more about the family.

If you would like to know when there is something to play, leave an address on the front page. One email when chapter one opens, perhaps one more when the whole road does. No newsletter about our feelings.

Rally Mortis is a game for adults, with cartoon violence, crashes and watercolour blood. Everyone in it is fictional, including the country. Pre-alpha: everything here is work in progress.

Thank you for reading this far. The deceased would have been mildly irritated. We are delighted.