DYNAMO DREAMS (Indie Scifi youtube series made in Blender)

Ran across this rather cool project on youtube a few days ago.. this super talented fellow named Ian Hubert is working on a scifi series with epic dystopian Cyberpunk like cities and spaceships creating everything (other than the greenscreen actors) in Blender.

The Teaser
It all started with this super impressive Cyberpunkish teaser fan film where there doesn’t seem to be any cuts.. very nice!

As soon as I saw the above I wanted to see the greenscreen version as presumably the lift is fake she’s just walking around a small area with some cleverly positioned light sources and sure enough I found they’ve done a nice behind the scenes video showing how they did just that!

The Main Series
Episode 01:
All the cool stuff above was just a teaser for a bigger series this guy is doing.. the first episode is more of that girl in the cyberpunk city and it just looks amazing.. crazy to think he did all this in blender.

More Cyberpunk Demos in Unreal Engine 5

A year or so ago I posted some freaky Cyberpunk Unreal 5 demo videos and thankfully the talented fellow behind them has continued to make more. Some of these are just mindblowing!

Cloudpunk Nivalis and Cyberpunk 2077 updates in 2023

Been a few years since I last posted about the final Cyberpunk 2077 Night City Wire episodes and talked about the cool indie game Cloudpunk tiding us over until Cyberpunk 2077’s release which of course happened and was a bit of a disaster lol! However over the years since much has happened with these 2 great games so I though I’d look back and forwards at what’s going on with both of them!

Cloudpunk / Nivalis
Starting with Cloudpunk the original game proved to be quite a hit (likely due to so many people waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 jumping over to it) so they quickly released a cool addon pack in 2021 called City of Ghosts that added several more playable characters and stories. Then in 2022 the really big announcement came when they decided to massively overhaul, upgrade and expand their engine and city to create a huge life sim game called Nivalis that looks super cool! Trailers below!

Cyberpunk 2077
Yeah we all know how things went down with the cluster F release of Cyberpunk 2077, however as expected CD Projekt Red worked away on all the bugs and judging by it’s glowing reviews on steam the game we have today in 2023 is pretty much what we should have got back in 2020. So naturally in 2022 the new content started getting announced! Firstly a cool Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime series came out on Netflix with a new Night City Wire episode announcing TV series content being added to the game that brought a lot of players back (which was thankfully by then in far better condition) and now in 2023 we’re getting the big addon pack Phantom Liberty with a new area of the city opened up, Keanu Reeves back as Johnny Silverhand and Idris Elba playing a new character. Videos below!

The rise of the 2D pixel art in 3D hybrid games (The Last Night, Songs of Conquest, & Octopath Traveller)

Over the last decade we’ve seen a resurgence of indie point & click adventures games that mix low res VGA like pixel art graphics with modern coloured lighting effects (which perhaps I’ll do a separate post on some time) however in more recent years I’ve started to notice this fascinating new genre emerging where 2D pixel art is placed in 3D environments with freaky modern lighting, texture & particle effects combined with ‘camera tricks’ such as forced perspective, zooming and side to side scrolling creating a powerful 3D parallax scrolling effect (using a almost fixed angle camera otherwise from the side they’d look like pieces of paper moving around lol) leading to some utterly awesome retro but not retro looking games. Let me know if you’ve found more games out there like these 3 using these retro/modern hybrid tricks!

One of the first to really catch people’s attention was the trailer for The Last Night, a cyberpunk Flashback like platformer game that looks truly amazing! Sadly it still hasn’t been released yet due to some controversies and finance issues but apparently it’s still alive in 2022 so fingers crossed it gets over the line one day!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/612400/The_Last_Night/

I’ve already posted about this one previously but I’m super excited about the new Heroes of Might & Magic style fantasy turn based strategy game called Songs of Conquest that looks utterly awesome too! They’ve gone into early access and all the feedback is sounding really good so far.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/867210/Songs_of_Conquest/

Cyberpunk 2077 and The Matrix Demos in Unreal Engine 5

The recent release of Unreal Engine 5 has resulted in some cool videos showing off it’s amazing and realistic graphical capabilities. The first two videos are very short fan made tributes to Cyberpunk 2077 (which already looked pretty awesome in the REDEngine lol) in UE5 and the second is a freaky UE5 Matrix car chase sequence with a young Neo & Trinity in their primes!
UPDATE: More Cyberpunk Unreal 5 vids posted HERE

Cloudpunk and Cyberpunk 2077 Final Night City Wires

Looks like Cyberpunk 2077 is delayed again haha not that it really matters to me since this old retro gamer doesn’t have a computer that can run it anyway lol. However continuing from my previous post about the awesome Night City Wires 1-3 there’s been some cool new ones which I’ll post below. But firstly I’ve just noticed a review in a recent PC Gamer magazine of a small indie game called Cloudpunk that has you piloting a flying taxi around a rainy cyberpunk city at night. Looks and sounds awesome as that cockpit has massive Blade Runner vibes, the taxi reminds me of 5th Element and that creepy stormy sky reminds me of Highlander 2 lol!

Apparently there’s not much depth to the gameplay sadly as it’s more about immersion. However considering I was more looking forward to driving around Cyberpunk 2077’s city at night listening to synth tunes instead of just running around shooting people then I suspect this little game will be right up my alley haha! Apparently you get your own apartment in a sky scraper with a balcony looking over the city that you can decorate and play retro video games in, so hmm yup that’s got me written all over it too lol! Although yet again my old computer probably can’t even run this one either arrrgh haha!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/746850/Cloudpunk/

Here’s the recent Night City Wire videos as well…

Cyberpunk 2077 Night City Wire – Behind The Scenes Video Series

Even though this old retro gamer will need a new computer to play it lol, I’ve been very much looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077 being released and have been drooling over all the videos CD Projekt Red have been releasing on youtube. Eg just look at the amazing views of the huge city in this one!

UPDATE: Night City Wire 4 & 5 posted HERE.

Over the last few months they’ve been doing a really good behind the scenes series called ‘Night City Wire’ with heaps of amazing new gameplay footage. Here’s the first few episodes!

New Cyberpunk 2077 Video Footage

Woot! 39,000 visitors to Blake’s Sanctum now! 10k up from this time last year and we’re closing in on the big 40k! Thanks for the support guys! 🙂

The more I see of this game, the more I get excited about it! Finally some proper game footage has been recently released and not just a few mins but a massive 48mins of footage! Is it sad that I’ve watched it like 3 times now lol? I just can’t get enough of it. Takes me back to so many films like Blade Runner, Minority Report, Judge Dread (90s and especially 2012 version), and 5th Element etc. Reminds me that I need to check out that recent cyberpunk TV show called Altered Carbon! Mates keep talking about it being really good.

I play a lot of futuresynth, 80s synth, retro synth music on youtube and the videos are often accompanied by cool animations of retro futuristic cars driving through cyberpunk style dystopian cities at night with glowing blue and purple nights. In the Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay footage when you see them get in the retro sportscar and drive around the city GTA5 style I knew right away that there’s gonna be moments where I break off from the main game just go for a drive at night playing some tunes haha.

Note: If you don’t have 48mins to spare then I recommend you at least check out the 10min mark when she leaves her apartment and walks out into the amazing city!