Game-Art-HQ

Descent illustrated by David Aly Chacón Niubó aka Unreal-Forever

Our April/May Art Challenge was all about a list of around 20 old and new games and the challenge to illustrate their gameplay in a fan art. David, aka. Unreal-Forever from Chile took the challenge and picked Descent from the list. He participated in Game-Art-HQ Projects before including our 20th Years of Doom Tribute and I am really happy that he used Descent for this challenge.

It was an amazing experience when it was released in the mid-nineties and one of the most difficult first person shooters I ever played.

Descent, first released in 1995 for the PC and later ported to the Sony Playstation was one of the early first person shooters, and also one of the first games in general that featured the six degrees of freedom gameplay. Instead of being a heavy-armed soldier, the player controls a little starship through the levels and can fly into every direction. 

While games like Doom, Hexen or Wolfenstein 3D were already revolutionary, Descent delivered a  different kind of a 3D experience though this gameplay feature. It was a commercial and critical success but not so skilled players avoided the game since its gameplay could result in very chaotic action if the player was not able to get really familiar with the unusual controls.

Descent received two sequels and a few spinoff games as well, and right now there is the official sequel Descent: Underground as well as a “spiritual successor” with the name Overload in development. Both games are crowdfunded, Overload is made by many of the original Descent game developers. I look forward to see both games in action in 2018.