Wieldo has been public on Steam for a few days now! 😀 To celebrate this milestone, let's talk about the game and what to expect about it. Also, there is a new playable prototype on itch.io.
Gameplay
Open-world survival
As you may have read on the Store Page already, Wieldo is another take on the (awesome) open-world survival genre. You know, this feeling of being thrown in a brand new world and slowly making it your own little paradise by... destroying everything else. Why is it so good 🙈
Wieldo is obviously inspired by other games in the genre, especially Minecraft, Forager and Factorio for the following reasons:
- Minecraft is a wonderful canvas for creativity. I want players to feel empowered to be creative.
- Forager has proved that bright colors and cute aesthetics can find a market, and I'm down for it.
- Factorio and Minecraft have this automation layer you can spend an eternity optimizing.
Build, gather and fight!
In Wieldo, you progress by building and transforming the world, rather than through your character who is mostly a vessel of your will (with a sword).
An example I like to give, is that you'd build and visit a healing station instead of crafting and drinking healing potions.
Then, when you've built an appropriate amount of support structures, it's time to summon monsters and bosses. Fight like a hero and you'll be rewarded with better blocks to add to your build palette.
Development
Solo
Wieldo is developed by me, Starbender, a French game designer turned solo developer. The project started early 2022 and I hope to be able to release an early access version in late 2023.
Timeline
The first seven months have been spent on building the foundations for a game of this type. The rendering pipeline, the networking, the internal modding system, the UI framework.
That gives us a building simulator with a unique artistic direction. Just enough to be comfortable communicating about the game on Steam.
Now there is one year left to work on features that will be more often gameplay-oriented.
Steam vs Itch
Wieldo is at an early stage of development. Demos released on Steam are, to my knowledge, usually very high quality experience close to the real deal.
To avoid any confusion, I'll be releasing prototypes on this itch.io page for anyone to test the current state of the game.
Final words
Thanks for reading this devlog! Please wishlist Wieldo if you are interested in the game. If you are on Twitter you can also follow the game's account there.
Starbender (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧