While most of the “made in Vietnam” games released before were action or platform titles, Thần Trùng is one of the few Vietnamese game projects that chose a spiritual theme, revolving around the phenomenon of funerary rites.
Although the nearly 5-minute trailer of Thần Trùng has been described by many gamers as somewhat… amateurish, this game still received positive feedback for its distinctly Vietnamese context.
Viewers can easily recognize familiar details such as the patterned tile floor, the “tiger cage” balcony of an old apartment building, or the sign and propaganda poster next to a small alley – all executed quite meticulously on a 3D graphics platform.
The most “under-the-radar” studio in the Vietnamese gaming industry!
Behind the Thần Trùng game project is DUT Studio, which consists of three well-known streamers in the gaming community such as Dũng CT, Vũ Hay Ho, and Đạt Óc.
It can be said that DUT Studio is truly one of the most… “under-the-radar” game-making groups in Vietnam, just as the name of the studio suggests. The reason for establishing DUT Studio is quite humorous, as the streamers suddenly got the urge to create a horror game for fun, to prove that they could also make games like others!
In contrast to the impressive headquarters of top game development studios in Vietnam, DUT Studio is located in a room of about several dozen square meters, situated on the second floor of an office lunch shop.
Notably, before starting work on Thần Trùng, all members of the team were amateurs, studying fields unrelated to game development. For instance, the famous streamer Dũng CT studied at the Nano Physics Department at the Vietnam National University, Vũ Hay Ho studied mechanical engineering at the University of Science and Technology, while Đạt Óc was an outstanding student of… the University of Pharmacy (!?).
Even more “horrifying,” none of the DUT Studio members have any knowledge or experience in programming, scriptwriting, 3D modeling/animation, or level design, etc. Moreover, an anonymous member of DUT Studio recently signed up for a 3D modeling course to help develop Thần Trùng.
Thần Trùng is being developed on a PC system with a configuration that could be considered… outdated, including two old 4:3 ratio monitors.
DUT Studio has chosen Unity Engine to develop Thần Trùng, as this toolset has many advantages such as being user-friendly, having a large user community, being well-supported by the manufacturer, and having a highly diverse asset library.
Of course, with a team that is “not strong but very daring” like DUT Studio, developing Thần Trùng at this stage is essentially trial and error. For example, to create the action of the main character picking up and examining objects, the members of DUT Studio had to spend 5 hours reading the manual and trying various methods to accomplish it. For the scenes in the recently released trailer, the team lost sleep for an entire month to complete them.
The current development of Thần Trùng by DUT Studio is a process of “trial and error.” The game is primarily developed during the members’ spare time.
Contrary to speculations or predictions on social media, the members of DUT Studio have happily admitted that they currently… do not know what kind of gameplay Thần Trùng will have. Since all team members are still in the process of learning how to make games, the mechanics and features in Thần Trùng’s gameplay have not been clearly defined by DUT Studio. In other words, Thần Trùng may take on a very different appearance in the future, entirely different from what was shown in the trailer.
According to DUT Studio, the group’s highest goal is to try to complete the game on time for a release in the fourth quarter of 2021. Notably, DUT Studio also does not hide their ambition to bring Thần Trùng to the largest PC game development platform today, Steam.