New Demo Coming Soon!
October has been an exciting month for Esau’s World! We have officially finished all the game’s main levels! There are still a few cutscenes to hammer out, but this is a HUGE milestone! It’s hard to imagine making it this far when I prototyped the idea for this game at a Game Trailer Jam two years ago.
Here are a few things to look forward to:
Incremental Mechanics
Esau's World is a co-op puzzle game in single player. You set up plans with your brother, Esau, and act them out together!
One of the biggest things I wanted to avoid was throwing players into the system all at once, overwhelming them. To do this I ended up building a lot of inter-mediary systems to help teach different mechanics in isolation (like Regin, the Super-Villanous Worm!). Something I’ve been really excited for is the moment when all of these systems come together and get used all at once! It’s a long journey players have to go through to get there, but that just makes the payoff all the more exciting!
Story
Esau’s World has a narrative focus about a magic book that Esau, the main character’s brother, found as a child. The book has the ability to create a sub-world where the book’s owner is a god, able to create anything. This power has proved too tempting, because Esau has hidden himself away within his own world and cut off all connections. Jake, perhaps the only other person who knows about Esau's World, goes looking for him in a moment of crisis, only to find that all is not well in the world Esau has fashioned for himself.
It’s an ambitious story about something that references my own life story and struggles. This is one of the reasons the game took so long to make! I really wanted to do this story justice and properly portray something I know a lot of other people struggle with too.
Challenge Rooms (still working on!)
Yes! Optional challenge rooms for you to test your cerebral skills and get bragging rights! These are puzzles more difficult than the main campaign, found by looking off the beaten path. Collecting these will find “filled pages”, of some background in Esau’s World, which will flesh out more of the story, so there’s a great incentive to seek them out! They will not be required to understand the story, but getting them will be a real reward!
New Demo
The next demo will show about 50% of the game's total content. Look forward to this sometime in early January! This is so exciting! I hope you'll join in me in watching how this journey ends!
God Bless You!
Connor