We've been working on this game for 2 Years?!
And this is how it turned out...
So much has been done on the game in the last 2 years, from it's conception to the current state of the build, a lot of screenshots, videos and milestones have been hit along the way. I would like to bring to light some of the highlights and just want to show where the game used to be, where it's at now and everything else in between. There's a large back catalogue of these, and I think they paint an interesting picture of where we used to be at various points in the journey.
Also...
Join the Discord!
If you want to see even quicker, more disjointed ramblings and snippets about the game as they appear, get in the discord server!
Early Concepts
The idea for the game was pretty simple: A bunch of cute little dudes, who were kind of like pilgrims or something, that each had their own role in a multiplayer survival scenario. The function of day night cycles and ACTUAL darkness and enemies that blend in heavily with the darkness were the core fundamentals. We really wanted to drive home that sense of "uh oh when the sun goes down, you better be ready or you're in for it".
What do you do in the this game?
You start in your stronghold (cathedral) as a part of a strange order of little pilgrims. You venture out during the day to collect resources, and try fulfill quests and objectives of the order. At sundown you will need to coordinate to survive against a variety of demons that stalk you in the darkness. Making sure to have and maintain a light source is key to your survival. Also you would be able to (and now can!) unlock skills from various shrines in the game. Before they used to be a linear skill tree regulated to each class and were obtained by level up, but now there are specific shrines you must find and visit in sequence to complete a pilgrimage. Each time you visit and activate a shrine of a specific House you will be gifted a random skill from that house's skill pool. If you want to get another ability from that particular house you need to complete your pilgrimage and visit the other shrines first!
Design Iteration
At the start the idea of multiple classes that would cover each role in a journey/crusade sounded appealing. The idea of "forcing players to work together" always sounds nice, but we just kept running into the predictable problem of "why would anyone choose anything else than a fighting oriented class", and if all the classes can fight, then how is the combat class (knight) special? Is solo play impossible on a utility class? We decided to just melt the classes down into individual skills, that the player could choose to actively master at their will, not an uncommon RPG layout, but it's been a lot more stable since then. It's safe to assume that everyone in a party is going to want to beat up baddies.
The characters when we started
little player character pilgrim dude in question circa November 2022. The other classes had different color trims. Real cutting edge design theory.
I set upon making all the core "nodes" I could for the game earlier on, so that there was a tangible object for the main things in the game that would denote gameplay and scaling (different quality ores, weapons and tools). They all shared the same palette texture and sometimes I wish we had stuck to this more simple style but that sounds like an art direction to commit to in a future game.
The models for natural nodes and trees in the game, the general consensus was that a large part of the environment would be forest/woodland
All your tiers of base tools and weapons in one place, this was the most organized I ever was on the project
This is about the earliest screenshot of a build I could find:
Over time...something started to take shape...
Lots of old nodes got a facelift by around the 6 month mark, plenty of animations were added, I couldn't help but make sure we had at least 3 outfits to pick from (made from swappable parts) and made sure to build out a core starting kit of levels.
Present day graphics
Day time is chill and nice to just collect things and explore a bit!
Then night comes and you forgot you shouldn't have messed around all days, oops, now the demons are here...
Checking out if there is anything in the gear store I can afford to help me survive...
That's a quick recap for now. I will continue to post about things already in the game, interesting aspects of development, and what we hope and aim for in the projects future!