Hey there, Strangers from the Internet! I hope you’re doing all right!
I’m Arn, game director on Trailblazers: Into the March and this my first devlog.
Have you ever wondered what the world might look like a thousand years after humanity nearly wiped itself out in an orgiastic cataclysm? Fantasized about what kind of explorer you would’ve been when the world was still wild and wide? Spent sleepless nights thinking, “Isn’t it Into the Marsh? Did they make a typo in their title? Should I be worried for them?”
Well fret not, benevolent reader, as I’m here to answer some of those questions.
As the title says…
Welcome to the March
Firstly, let’s clear the air: It’s March, not Marsh. Unbeknownst to some people with a richer social life than me, a March describes a borderland territory and was used during Medieval European times to qualify all kind of contested land, untamed regions or buffer zones between different states. In our case the best variation of this word comes from the Old Norse word mǫrk, meaning “forest, woodland, borderland”.
We choose this word for two reasons:
We thought it was a well-known word.
It described exactly what we wanted our game world to be.
Here is a fun fact: In WoW, the French translation of “Westfall” is “La Marche de l’Ouest”. Which means Westmarch. It has absolutely nothing to do with our game. But I don’t see another time in my life where I’ll get to share this, so I’m taking the shot.
From phantasmagoric sea to ever-shifting lands
As you might know Trailblazers: Into the March started as a project about pirates. The pitch we decided, as a crew, to develop was “FTL X Pirates”. So the first iterations of the March were actually iterations of the “8th Sea”:
Players were supposed to navigate the 8th Sea, a sea of phantasms and magical realism.
We weren’t sure of the 3D vs 2D direction yet so were looking to make it interesting in top-down view also.
I just like this one so I’m showing it to you. Shout out to @arnowillustrations who was working as an artist on the project back then.
The fundamentals were very close to what we have today though:
The player would leave a main port to explore an uncharted area at the fringe between reality and the supernatural.
Expeditions were prepared in the port. Player had to manage their resource stock, choose a hull and loadout, pick crew members, and venture forth to fulfill contracts.
The sea was everchanging by nature. We kept that idea with the March.
When we decided to commit fully to our 2D top-down perspective and transitioned to the idea of Landships we looked for a way to maintain the core premises we liked with the Pirate fantasy : the crew, the port, the uncharted and living unknown to explore.
We found inspiration in many places, but the most essential ones were :
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (and generally speaking Hayao Miyazaki’s work as a whole)
Stalker, be it the film from Andrei Tarkovski or the games from GSC Game World
La Horde du Contrevent, a French science-fiction novel by Alain Damasio
Nausicaa: Voracious toxic jungle
Nausicaä is a post-post-apocalyptic world, a bit like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Zelda: BotW, or ours <3.
It means the story takes place long after the world as we know it has ended. The cataclysm is far away in the past, and civilization now endures or rebuilds within a transformed world.
In Nausicaä, humanity survives in scattered pockets, struggling against the ever-spreading, hostile spore-forest known as the “Rotten Sea.” From a human perspective things are quite desperate, between stagnation and warring states reproducing past mistakes.
The March in Trailblazers draws directly from this. Humanity is confined to a fragile enclave, any expansion endeavor being blocked by the March. Political tensions are rising between the different nations of the enclave, a path through the March must be found.
A guy lost in the Rotten Sea. If you want to delve in Nausicaa because it piqued your interest know that the film is good but the manga covers more ground and is even cooler.
STALKER: Journey through the Zone
In STALKER, a group known as the Stalkers are specialized in venturing into the “Zone”, a surnatural area surrounding Chernobyl. They serve as guides, mercenaries or simply go there to scavenge valuable artifacts created by the Zone.
At the center of the Zone lies a Monolith who can supposedly grants one’s heart true desire. The film and the game series have different tonalities but they both tell the stories of people seeking to reach the heart of a dangerous and unpredictable region in search of meaning, redemption, or something they can’t name.
The Trailblazers are inspired by the Stalkers. And at the center of the March lies something that calls to those willing to reach it.
In S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl you can meet other Stalkers on your journey. This games really succeed in creating a feeling of diffuse community with those characters. Translating this in Trailblazers is a dream of mine.
La Horde du Contrevent: Expedition 34
In La Horde du Contrevent, humanity survives in a world ravaged by violent winds. We follow the 34th "Horde” a group of 23 individuals trained from birth to go against the wind and discover its origin. They leave the bastion of humanity to go and explore their world to secure the survival of civilization.
In Trailblazers: Into the March we took the consecutive expeditions trying to go further and further, leaving from the last city before the March: Terminas.
La Horde du Contrevent got a French comic book adaptation. There was also a game project crowdfunded back in the days but I think it might have been abandoned. At least we got Expedition 33 to fill that hole in our heart so we got that going for us!
Shaping the March
With enough inspirations to guide us it was time to give shape to the March. We wanted it to have different type of biomes so we started to do some moodboard research to pinpoint what we were looking for exactly.
A glimpse on an early internal moodboard. I’m only showing a sample of it as we want to keep some surprise.
We decided to start with the biome that would feel the more “vanilla” but that would also solve some challenges like level of depths and strong variations. We went to develop what we call internally the [Untamed Forest].
Those were some initial top-down asset sketches to build the biome.
In parallel we worked on the general lore and structure of the game. We did some research on the general March map, but also on the actual city of Terminas.
Research made for the overworld map structuration.
Concept sketch made by Adrien on the city of Terminas, from which every expedition into the March starts.
Looking for gameplay expression
While the art team (of one) was working on defining the vibe of our universe, the rest of the team was looking to find a way to express our fantasy into gameplay. And let me tell you, benevolent reader, the relationship between the March, the landship and movement in our game has been the subject of many iterations.
Before we settled on this more constrained “corridor” design we had tested a lot of different solutions :
Early on, you could roam freely on the map and send your characters outside of the landship to cut some trees. Your landship could even shoot at poop-throwing monkeys, giant frogs and weird caterpillar creatures (I’ll show them to you one day).
We were using a placeholder for the landship back then, thank you @scribblesinspace. We never met nor talked but I used this ship of yours in super early mockups of the game.
As we advanced towards a combat structure based on tactical duels between landships, we rebooted the way movement worked in the game and tried to have a more constrained structure, closer to classical roguelite design, with simple lines and points.
At a certain point, the whole Journey was reduced to a gauge progressing beneath the landship screen and the March maw was chasing you, forcing you to advance.
In this version Player could travel to different points and events would unfold as text-based adventures.
Different iterations followed, with the intent to make things less abstract and to bring back the free-roaming. We tested a lot of things. Each of those iterations ended up defining what we have today one way or another.
At a certain point we were pondering making the map low-poly and look a bit like Zelda: Link’s Awakening.
The idea of having a sonar was there quite early in the project. While I dug for references I stumbled upon Barotrauma and was mesmerized by their sonar system.
Finally, the split between the two parts came. The structure solidified with an overworld map, called the [March Map]. This map has nodes you’re going to explore in a more direct way, called [Journeys] for now. Those moments compose the main part of the gameplay loop. We’ve been mainly focusing on [Journeys] since then to make sure this part of the loop is functional and cool to play.
The March Map and the nodes you’re going to explore
One of the research mockups for the Journey map coupled to the landship advancing in its corridor.
Of March and Men
In Trailblazers, the world has ended, and from its ruins, a new one rose. Humanity has reached its natural border: the March. If civilization is to endure, a path must be opened. A trail must be blazed. You are a Trailblazer, the captain of a Landship: a roving refuge shaped by necessity and daring hearts. Your lifeline in this hostile region. You have been charged with a mission: uncover the secrets of the March and discover what lies at its core.
This devlog was meant to give you insights on what we’re creating and how the process goes behind the curtain. It’s a fascinating endeavor to build a world, especially one who’s meant to be played. To be fully transparent with you, benevolent reader, I think it’s a bit magical and I’m not always sure of how things happens. It’s a collective effort influenced by all kind of conflicting needs, desires and unpredictable parameters.
As the poet says : “The best laid plans of March and Men often go awry”
But constraints in art tend to generate the coolest things.
I’m really proud of being part of this team and of the work we’re doing. All the people involved went from turning this mockup:
This one was made with DnD battlemap resources I could find online.
Into those wondrous interactive paintings, with living characters in it. Dreaming, like we all do, of eating a good meal or taking a nap :
I didn’t touch on sub-biomes variations subject. But the Untamed Forest already have a bunch of them, it might be a topic to adress in a future devlog!
This one is currently my favorite biome I think. I’m not sure I should say that? The mix of coral and fungal aesthetic with the slow spore rain makes me want to live there (with a gas mask).
Our art team has been hard a work to create cool landmarks to discover in those biomes and we can’t wait to show them to you.
Voilà.
I hope you enjoyed the read, if you’re still here you have all my gratitude. Let us know what you thought of the format, we always appreciate feedbacks on form or substance. We have ideas for the next devlog but if you’re curious about things feel free to ask!
Take care of yourself Trailblazers,
and see you in the March.
Arn