Heart Machine

Possessor(s) - June '25 Show + Tell 😈

Added 2025-07-11 17:00:12 +0000 UTC

Hiya hot demon lovers 😈 ❤️‍🔥

June was PACKED for Possessor(s)! Let’s get a little recap and behind-the-scenes, shall we?

Summer Game Fest, Tribeca + Demo!

We were part of the Day of the Devs showcase, launching our first out of four(!!) animated shorts featuring a new character no one has seen yet: Professor Foss.

Have you watched it on YouTube? There are a few additional details about Foss in the description. Surprised no one mentioned it on Discord just yet. 👀 I have also recently seen and approved the final animations of the next one, and oh boy, does it hit the feels. Can’t wait for you to see it! Here’s some emoji leaks: 🧸 🛍️ 🔥 😨 🪦

Working on the Dev Intro part of our segment was pretty fun! Laura wrote the script, and I spent most of the time forgetting how to speak. Here’s a little montage of some outtakes. 😭

New challenge for all of you: say “Possessor(s) is a search-action game” five times, fast.

(yes I do speak out loud to myself to my cats (who were not in the room while recording) a lot, the joys of working from home lmao)

ALSO SURPRISE DEMO DROP!!! 🎉

The team worked tirelessly on this, and it was absolutely incredible to see you all so excited about it!! We have read through all of your feedback, critique (and praise!!), and have addressed a lot of them in the weeks following the Demo being out. We are working with Devolver to do a little post on Steam about the changes that we have made from your feedback, which we should post soon(ish).

As part of being in the Day of the Devs showcase, we had the pleasure of being on the Summer Game Fest campus throughout the weekend to have the first hands-on for press! A lot of really nice articles came out of it! And we were put on a lot of “Best Demo from Steam Next Fest” lists. Here are my two favorite article titles, though:

The demons are both tragic and hot in Possessor(s), the Hyper Light Drifter studio's new fantasy platformer from RockPaperShotgun
Possessor(s) Is A Dark Metroidvania Featuring An Extremely Hot Demon And I'm Already Obsessed With It from Gamespot

I did not take many photos during the weekend, as we had someone new trying the Demo every 30 minutes(!!!), and I was mostly glued to that couch (which was surprisingly very comfy), but here are some:

It also took me over an hour to troubleshoot the computer we were given and the build on-site, less than 12 hours before the show floor opened. 😅

Nothing wrong with this, right? 😅 😭

Only a few days after Summer Game Fest, we showcased the Demo at Tribeca! And we were nominated for an award! It was very fun to see coworkers, and so many people trying out the game!

Oh, and no big deal, but the Team Possessor(s) won the Tribeca soccer tournament. 😎 🏆 Our friends at Gumbo played on our behalf. And as Yiyi said it so perfectly, “PSE is the best soccer trophy-winning search action game of all time!”

Let see what else happened this month!

Animation & VFX

Since you have all seen it by now, let's see the process to bring Injured Rhem from concept to final animation in-game, concepted by Sophie and animated by Robby!

Poor Rhem. 😞

Robby took the concept to do a quick lined block-out.

Sophie suggested having him more in a 3/4 position to be in line with our other NPCs, and provided this outstanding example:

Robby then made a new block-out, mixing both the previous position and applying some of Sophie’s suggestion, which was approved, and then made a colored version of it:

The hair bounce is so good. 💔

Something that has been reported a lot from the Demo is the lack of feedback on shielded enemies not receiving damage from Luca, June went in and made a “Blocked” animation for Luca:

In the meantime, Ivan has been experimenting with… 3D VFX. 👀

Another fun bit this month is our art director, Danny, refusing to have our little Crawly Floodlight enemy cut from the game. He messaged me saying it’s his favorite, and he would color it himself, as the animation team did not have time for it. (I’m secretly glad because I also very love this little guy, eheheh.)

Concept

Now that the Demo has happened, I can finally show you:

✨ Her ✨

Tens is such a fashion icon. ❤️‍🔥

and, obviously, a team favorite, Cheekers. 🐀

And this little drawing Alx made for our Death/Revive screen. 🥺

Environment

Cam has been spending some time in buildings (uh oh, am I teasing some enemies you haven’t seen yet 🤫):

While Matt has been back to school, and doing deco work on the Campus:

Meagan has jumped in from Breakerland to help support us on Possessor(s) for a little bit! We are so grateful to have her around to help with coverage on deco work. 😊 Here is some of her work:

In the meantime, Wolf has been doing a lighting pass throughout the whole world. Inside has been a big inspiration for us at the beginning of the project, so this region (🤫) has had an “Inside” treatment. Here are some before and after:

UI/UX

Fun fact: when a little piece of UI comes from the side of the screen, we call it “toast”. It has confused many people on the team while talking about toasts during meetings. 😆 Here’s our toast for the Pursuits!

And something we had to put in for one of our deliveries to our publisher was a functional “Credits” page in our main menu. Has we do not have the full list just yet, we decided to go for something fun where everyone decided on their title. Enjoy 😆