Atajrubah is an Arabian Inspired Open World Surivival Game for the Oculus Rift – Developer Update

There is a chance you may not have seen Atajrubah before, but it’s one of the earlier titles to be launched pledging to be built from the ground up for the Oculus Rift. The development team describe the game as a ‘Arabian inspired Survival Game for the Oculus Rift and traditional input devices’, an intriguing and refreshingly little explored concept, especially in the VR gaming space.

The game is set in a fantasy desert environment bearing a striking resemblance to the middle-east during the 30s and 40s. You’ll be able to explore the world along with others online, seeking out treasures and secrets as you go. To summarise the gameplay style, I’l borrow a neat sentence from the team’s IndieGogo Campaign: “Think Minecraft meets DayZ meets the Middle East, but with Ghuls and Djinn instead of Zombies or Creepers.”

So, how’s development going? We asked Alan Robinson, Lead Developer at Nexy Media to give us an update and share some images of the game in action. Over to Alan:

The past couple months since Comicon Dubai have seen Atajrubah get a total overhaul. We’ve switched to Unreal Engine 4,welcomed new team members on board, got Atajrubah running on different platforms and much more. Its been such an exciting experience watching the game grow and working with Unreal Engine 4 has been a great experience thus far.

[Coding and Technical]

Steamworks was integrated fairly easily early on. In addition to that we’ve got Atajrubah running on Mac and plan on approaching a Linux build in the coming weeks.Over the past week or so I’ve been tackling some technical work in Unreal Engine4 by setting up foliage meshes,Level Of Detail and a flexible terrain material setup.This will help myself and the environment artist more easily decorate a vast yet varied and performance efficient world for players to explore.

[New Team Members]

As with any development team and especially so with an independent one , team members tend to move on when bigger opportunities arise. Irsyad Ishak our concept artist and Joe Dodd our character artist, were both fortunate enough to get hired full time at studios in Singapore and Houston respectively.

Fortunately we have found some amazingly talented artists to fill their roles, I’ve provided some information about the new team members below.

Team Member: Tien Chi
Role: Concept Artist
Portfolio: http://www.artoftienchi.com/portfolio.html

Tien has been hard at work creating all kinds of model sheets and concept pieces to guide and inspire myself and the other team members.

Team Member: Dan Hitchen
Role: Character Artist
Portfolio: http://www.danhitchen3d.co.uk

Dan has taken on the task of overhauling the character assets for Atajrubah, at present he’s in the process of finishing the texturing process for the sculpt below.

Many thanks to Alan for the update, we’ll keep you posted on the game’s progress. In the mean time, check out the title’s Steam Greenlight page here.