Techland’s upcoming zombie survival game Dying Light: The Beast, promises to deliver some of the most realistic blood effects ever seen in a video game, and it’s all thanks to an impressively practical approach behind the scenes.
Blood in video games has always been tricky to get right. It often ends up looking too clean, too stylised, or simply repetitive – that’s the nature of video game assets. But for Dying Light: The Beast, developer and publisher Techland is pushing for a level of realism we don’t often see in video games.Â
Instead of relying solely on digital effects, the team turned to an innovative, practical method: they hired an actor to physically interact with pools of fake blood, capturing every detail through photogrammetry.
In a recent behind-the-scenes video, which you can check out above, Techland shared a fascinating look at this process. A dedicated actor was brought in to walk, slip, crawl, and even lie down in fake blood laid out on large sheets of plastic. A photographer then documented every handprint, smear, and splatter up close, capturing the organic chaos of real movement and giving devs some great environmental storytelling opportunities.Â
Screengrab 
Techland say they tried to find blood assets across different stores but none of these marketplaces had what the art team really wanted, so they decided to do their own thing. “Nothing that we could find was providing us with the reality and storytelling that we were searching for, so we thought that we should buy a lot of fake blood and create the situations that we wanted.
Screengrab 
The result comes to life in-game, as seen in the second image below. The environment, a decaying, eerie basement, is drenched in disturbingly lifelike blood stains, creating an atmosphere of true horror. Instead of generic decals, each stain feels unique and deeply unsettling, pulling players further into the game’s grim world.
Techland 
All in all, Techland’s approach does see bloody impressive and I can’t wait to finally get to play Dying Light: The Beast once it’s out next month on PC and consoles. It’s certainly one of the games to keep an eye on, if you love parkour, zombies and open world games.
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