Polyaris: January 2025 Development Update
After we closed our second playtest at the end of 2024, there was a lot of feedback to unpack regarding the core mechanics.
First and foremost, we want to focus on the four gameplay fundamentals of POLYARIS: survival, skiing, movement, and looting. We felt like we were trying to spread our efforts too thin in the last demo instead of focusing on what really matters.
Since January 2025 we’ve been deeply focused on reworking and improving our basic systems to come up with a better game, and I want to talk about some of them below.
TL;DR
Core Focus:
- Post-2024 playtest feedback drove a refocus on 4 pillars: survival, skiing, movement, and looting.
- Streamlining efforts to polish core systems instead of spreading resources too thin.
Survival System Overhaul:
- 30+ Health Modifiers (Afflictions): Added depth with effects like energy boosts (coffee), warmth gains (skiing), or radiation sickness.
- Body-Specific Impacts: Injuries (e.g., fractured leg) disable sprinting/skiing until treated, with lingering effects (e.g., "Frail Bone").
- New Health Recovery: No instant healing via medkits/food—restore health fully only by sleeping. Medical items now stop immediate threats (e.g., bleeding).
Visual Identity & Polish:
- Prioritizing unique art/style: revamped main menu, custom UI, and original 3D models.
- Reducing reliance on third-party assets for key visuals.
- Looting & Inventory:
- Introduced "Tetris" grid inventory: Manage weight and space by arranging items strategically.
Skiing Mechanics:
- Added first-person skiing animations to enhance immersion.
- Next steps: Integrate animations into player controllers for smoother, responsive controls.
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Survival System - Health & Modifiers (Afflictions)
Just having 4 bars for primary stats - such as warmth and hunger - doesn’t add much to the gameplay depth of a survival game, especially in POLYARIS. So we began adding a more in-depth affliction system which includes over 30 health modifiers - both positive and negative. Examples of such modifiers will be energy boosts from coffee and energy drinks, increased warmth from prolonged skiing, or an Acute Radiation Sickness if you expose yourself near a radiation source.
Each health modifier can also affect individual body parts. For example, if you fracture your leg, you will no longer be able to sprint or ski until you treat it with a splint. But even if you apply a splint, your bones will not heal immediately and you will get a Frail Bone effect which may cause fracture recurrence. The only way to fully heal it will be to sleep for a long enough period of time.
Talking about health, we’ve decided to move away from a traditional FPS health system where you can restore your health immediately by eating or using a medkit. Now, you can only effectively restore your health by sleeping, and only use medical items to stop an immediate health loss (for example, from bleeding).
Visuals - New menu, UI, less third-party assets
We want to give a unique look and style to POLYARIS. A catchy main menu, sleek UI and original 3D-models are all great ways for this. Since there are only 3 of us, we oftentimes have to resort to some of the third-party marketplace assets for our game. However, we always want to make the most impactful visuals ourselves if we can, and only use other assets in areas where we are not confident in our abilities. Here are the examples of the visual stuff we’ve been working on in January.
Looting & “Tetris” Inventory
Many games nowadays have what’s called a “Tetris”-style inventory, which represents a grid where items can take up multiple grid slots. We find this system quite amusing and fun to play around, especially when it comes to managing your inventory, since you not only have to keep an eye on the weight, but also arrange items in your backpack in a certain way so that they fit.
New Skiing Animations
We have new shiny first-person skiing animations! This is the first step in making cross-country skiing mechanics feel more natural and fun to do. Next step will be integrating these animations into the player controller and improving the controls to make them more fluid and responsive.
That’s not everything, but these are the key details we can share for now. We’ll keep you posted.
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Cheers, mates!