A couple of weeks ago, I covered the process of LEVEL 7 [OMEGA PROTOCOL] tile design. Once we knew what our tiles looked like we needed to figure out what the different types of Faulty Intel looked like as well. In [OMEGA PROTOCOL], Faulty Intel means the room you’re about to encounter may or may not be what you are expecting. These tiles have the potential to be flipped by the overseer to reveal additional dangers or effects. [OMEGA PROTOCOL] has five types of Faulty Intel, and for each one we had to come up with its visual cues.

EMI (Electromagnetic Interference): For the EMI tiles we kept it fairly simple—on each tile with the potential for EMI we placed a concrete hatch in the floor. When the tile is flipped, the concrete hatch is opened up to reveal tech in the process of being repaired.

PERIL: When Peril is revealed, we wanted to showcase danger (duh). For this we tore open floor grates to expose sparking wires. The remnants of a raging hybrid, no doubt.

RUBBLE: On the tiles with the Rubble option, we created a variety of areas on the non-Rubble side that we could destroy. When these are flipped to the Rubble side, commandos are confronted with a room wrecked by a firefight—probably sometime during the events of LEVEL 7 [ESCAPE]. These were particularly fun because we got to tear things apart and be as creative as possible in making destroyed versions of the previous room.

VENT: Like the EMI, these were pretty straightforward. On the Vent side of the tile we simply included an illustrated floor vent that wasn’t part of Disco Team’s initial intel on Subterra Bravo.

CLONE NEST: Of all the Faulty Intel, these were the most fun. Our vision of a Clone Nest was essentially any area of Subterra Bravo that had been overrun by enemies and was awash in gore and the signs of battle. We even went so far as to have the corpses of the security guards from [ESCAPE] illustrated to populate these tiles for additional grisly effect.

Our creative process was very similar to the one covered in my last blog. Below is the standard version of tile 8A—a simple four-way passage with a few indicators things are not quite right in Subterra Bravo. Note this tile also features a concrete floor panel like those on the EMI tiles, but it stays sealed once flipped.

At this point in the process the art team had our design beats down, so I was able to get a little loose with my art direction. In the image below you can see the scribbles I passed over to artist Laine Garrett to get violent with during her creation of the 8B version of the tile. It’s worth noting that my “ALIEN ZONE” label was our playtest term, one later changed to Clone Nest. These types of term changes are very common once we start dialing in on our final language for the game.

Laine really delivered on what I was looking for. She is a true wizard with the blood splatters and drag marks, and it should be obvious to any commando this not going to be a safe place.

Thanks for indulging me in this little peek behind the scenes at the creative process, and the next time you are gearing up to play LEVEL 7 [OMEGA PROTOCOL], remember to double-check your intel.