#BLUD began as a proposed animated series, then became a game when Exit 73 asked what that world would feel like if players could enter it. The result is a top-down action adventure about Becky Brewster, a high-school freshman and heir to an ancient vampire-hunting lineage. Its production story is unusually visible in interviews: a pitch bible and one-minute proof of concept led to experiments in pixel art, a deliberate shift toward an interactive-cartoon look, and a large animation challenge that required every movement to work in eight directions.
From pitch bible to playable world
Exit 73’s project did not start as a game. In a 2019 developer interview with Game Pilgrim, the studio described #BLUD as a pitch for an animated series supported by a pitch bible and a one-minute animated proof of concept. The idea stayed in the studio’s library until programmer Cody Greenhalge suggested turning one of the pitch bibles into a game.
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That decision was not simply a matter of transferring characters and backgrounds into a different format. The team had to decide which parts of a television concept could become systems: what the player would do between story scenes, how a viewer’s attention would become exploration, and how a show-like visual identity could survive constant interaction. The interview records the origin account as the developers told it; it is not a complete production chronology, but it explains the central creative pivot.
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Why a game made sense for this concept
The premise already supplied a natural player role. Becky is a new student in Carpentersville, but she is also the latest member of a vampire-hunting family. School, friendships and ordinary errands can therefore sit beside supernatural investigations without needing a separate protagonist for each part of the story. A game can let the player move between those layers rather than watching them arrive in a fixed sequence.
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- Slaying the undead is just another day at high school for Becky Brewster, new kid in town and latest in an ancient bloodline of spellcasting vampire hunters.
- Take on a delightfully macabre menagerie of outrageously mutated animals and vampirically possessed townsfolk. Engage in epic, energetic boss battles as you defend your hometown.
- Hunt the forces of evil in high school halls, convenience store aisles, and shopping malls. Discover and accept missions from the town’s social media, and track down evil (and other after-school plans) with modern tech.
- Freshman life is ultrafast-paced—even more so when you’re the vampire-hunting new kid. Assist and befriend and assist a comic cast of quirky and memorable classmates as you find your place as a teenager in the world of #BLUD.
- Discover and earn upgrades for Becky’s trusty vampire-slaying field hockey stick to face the mounting challenges, including handy attachments like a grappling hook, shovel, and umbrella shield.
Store descriptions place Becky in locations including a high school, convenience store and mall. Missions, enemies and bosses turn those places into spaces to search and fight, while the school setting keeps the coming-of-age angle in view. Humble Games’ pre-release description called the project a dungeon crawler and action RPG that combines school, friends, field hockey and fighting fiends. That is the publisher’s framing, not a universal genre definition, but it captures the design problem Exit 73 was solving: make a supernatural adventure that still feels like a teen cartoon.
Building an “interactive cartoon”
Exit 73 said the team experimented with pixel art before settling on an interactive-cartoon direction. The distinction matters. Pixel art could have made the project read as a conventional retro game, while the chosen approach aimed to make the player feel as if a cartoon series had become explorable.
That goal affects more than outlines and color. A television character can turn, gesture or react in a single composed shot. A playable character must respond to a control input from any direction, at any moment, while remaining readable from a camera above the action. The production therefore had to treat animation as a gameplay requirement rather than decoration.
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In a June 26, 2024 CGMagazine interview, art and sound director Bob Fox described the key difference between making the project as animation and making it as a top-down game: “The one major difference being that we had to animate every movement in 8 different angles in order for the characters to work in a top-down game style.”
Those eight angles are the practical cost of the game’s viewpoint. Becky needs to look convincing while moving up, down, left, right and along the four diagonals. Attacks, dodges, tool use and reactions must remain legible across the same directions. A single walk cycle is not enough; each directional version has to preserve timing, silhouette and personality so the player does not lose the cartoon feel when changing course.
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Fox’s comment also explains why the visual ambition is a production story, not merely an art description. Every additional direction multiplies the work for movement and action animations. In a top-down adventure, that work is visible continuously because the player is always steering the character rather than viewing a controlled scene.
What the player actually does
Store listings describe a loop built around investigating supernatural trouble, accepting missions and fighting through hostile areas. Becky’s main weapon is a field hockey stick that can be upgraded with abilities including a grappling hook, shovel and umbrella shield. These are not just cosmetic references to her student life: they turn a school-sports motif into a set of traversal, defense and combat options.
Investigation tools
A grimoire helps Becky study the creatures she encounters, and monster selfies are used to investigate weaknesses. The combination supports the game’s cartoon logic: Becky documents strange events while learning how to deal with them. The mechanic also gives the player a reason to examine enemies rather than treating every encounter as a simple health-bar exchange.
Missions, bosses and familiar places
The high school, convenience store and mall provide recognizable settings for missions and boss encounters. Their everyday identity is part of the premise; the threat is demonic, but the spaces are places a freshman might plausibly know. The contrast lets the game move between school obligations and vampire-hunting without abandoning either side of Becky’s life.
Social media was added during development
The social-media mechanic was not part of the earliest fixed concept. Writer Gregory Lane told CGMagazine that the team added it later in development to match the original name and idea: “It was later on during the game’s development that we decided to add the social media aspect to match the original name and idea.”
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That timing is important when describing the game’s design. Social posts are a development choice made while the team was working out how the series premise should function interactively, not evidence that every feature was present in the original animated pitch.
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Lane also explained that hashtags were used as shorter hints for players who did not want to read every mission post. In practice, the mechanic gives the player two information speeds: the full social-media entry for context and the hashtag for a quicker direction. That is a small interface decision, but it reflects the broader adaptation challenge. A show can deliver exposition in dialogue or montage; a game must let players choose how much of a clue to consume before acting.
The social feed therefore serves both tone and usability. It reinforces the contemporary school-life setting while providing a compact way to surface objectives. Because the feature was added later, it is best understood as the team’s solution to a game-design need rather than as a rule inherited unchanged from the series proposal.
A small team making its first complete game
A June 2024 interview with Bob Fox published by Nindyki.pl reported that Exit 73’s team consisted of five people: two artists, two programmers and one writer. The same interview described #BLUD as the studio’s first complete game. Because that source is in Polish, those details should be treated as an attributed report of Fox’s comments rather than presented as an unqualified English quotation.
The team breakdown helps put the eight-direction animation requirement in context. Two artists were responsible for a visual system that had to support a cast, enemies and actions from multiple angles, while two programmers translated that material into movement, combat and interaction. The writer’s role covered a game that combines mission structure, school relationships, monster investigation and social posts. A five-person core team does not make the work impossible, but it makes the production choices legible: a focused visual identity and a tightly connected set of mechanics can be more practical than a sprawling feature list.
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Animation World Network’s March 13, 2024 episode listing described Exit 73 co-founders Chris Burns and Bob Fox discussing their path into game development, finding a producer and the decision to share work in progress on social media. The listing points to the podcast for the fuller conversation; it does not establish additional production anecdotes or quotations beyond that description.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Release date and where to play
The storefronts reviewed for the game list June 18, 2024 as the release date. Availability and feature labels can change by region, so check the current listing for the account and territory where you intend to play.
| Platform | Store listing details | Supported play modes or features stated |
|---|---|---|
| PC | Steam listing | PC version; current storefront specifications should be checked on Steam. |
| Nintendo Switch | Nintendo listing; 5.3 GB file size | TV, tabletop and handheld modes. |
| PlayStation | PlayStation listing | PS4 version. |
| Xbox | Xbox listing | Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and cloud play; identified as single-player. |
These listings establish platform versions and supported modes, not performance parity. The available evidence does not establish frame rate, resolution, loading times or feature differences between platforms, so those should not be inferred from the release list.
Publisher names vary by storefront
Storefront attribution is not uniform. Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation credit Humble Games or its corporate publisher in their listings, while Steam displays Balor Games. The safest description is therefore the one shown on the specific store page being discussed, rather than a single universal publisher label.
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What the development record can—and cannot—tell us
The interviews provide a clear through-line: an animated-series proposal, a decision to test it as a game, experiments with pixel art, a move to an interactive-cartoon style, eight-direction animation for the top-down view, and later additions such as social media and hashtag hints. They also identify key contributors and offer a snapshot of the small team behind the project.
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They do not amount to a complete production history. The available accounts do not document every milestone, budget decision, toolchain, schedule change, cut feature or platform-specific optimization. The Animation World Network listing signals that a longer conversation exists, but its summary alone cannot support details that it does not state. Keeping that boundary intact makes the documented story more useful: readers can see which choices the developers explicitly described and which parts of development remain unreported.
Why #BLUD’s adaptation story matters
#BLUD illustrates a specific kind of game development: adapting a visual concept whose original form depended on animation and episodic storytelling. The team did not simply make a tie-in to an existing series. It used the series pitch as a starting point, then rebuilt the experience around player movement, repeatable combat and optional information.
The top-down camera forced a substantial technical and artistic commitment. The eight-direction requirement translated the feeling of a cartoon character into a form that could survive constant input. The social feed and hashtags addressed a different problem: how to deliver story and clues without making every player read the same amount. Becky’s hockey-stick abilities, grimoire and selfies connect those systems to her identity as a student and hunter.
That combination is the most revealing part of the behind-the-scenes account. The project’s cartoon tone came from the original pitch, but its game identity emerged through the compromises and additions required by interactivity.
Quick Recap
Key takeaways for prospective players
- Premise: You play Becky Brewster, a new Carpentersville student from an ancient vampire-hunting lineage.
- Structure: Missions move through school and other everyday locations while introducing enemies, bosses and supernatural investigations.
- Combat and tools: Becky’s field hockey stick gains abilities such as a grappling hook, shovel and umbrella shield.
- Investigation: The grimoire and monster selfies help identify creature weaknesses.
- Visual production: The developers animated movement in eight directions for the top-down perspective.
- Story interface: Social media was added later, with hashtags serving as shorter hints for mission information.
- Platforms: Store listings cover PC, Switch, PS4 and Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S, with Switch play modes and Xbox cloud play specified by those listings.
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