Hi, and happy holidays!
I realized today that while I've been sharing monthly updates over on YouTube, this Steam page news section has been quiet as the grave. Shame on me!
Moving forward you'll see updates here as well, starting now with a little December xmas special! Come along on one of my field excursions and see how I work on some of the visuals of the game.
Real Building Blocks
I've always loved the mysterious and alien landscapes of close-up photography, and when thinking about more ways to infuse Solbrand with local flavor I realized I could literally build the world map out of pieces of Uppsala. In spring and summer I brought my camera along on my runs like a little paparazzi squirrel hoarding shots for the winter, and I managed to build up quite a library of strange things to use.
I then combine and paint over these to create building blocks for the game world, like these:
One thing I particularly like about this process is how it echoes the sense of discovery I want Solbrand to give you as a player: You venture out into the unknown in search of interesting fragments, and learn more about the world as you puzzle them together.
What about the new Georadar action shown...?
Glad you asked! I've been cooking up some new gameplay for narrowing down traces found on the map. In order to collect the fragment, probe the site, or make contact with the remains you've encountered, you first need to hone your signal through one of a few different minigames.
So far I have two variants implemented, and I'm toying with two more.
Seek. Keep the erratically moving signal within the target zone and blast it when fully charged. Needs <x> hits.
Pulse. A rhythm-style challenge where you need to keep in time with the signal until the meter is filled.
Sweep (in progress). A radial radar sweep with unevenly spaced bars to either sweep or avoid.
Track (in progress). A memory-style challenge where you must match an input signal.
Can you think of another variant that would be interesting to explore? Let me know in the comments!
Senses
Another extraordinarily sneaky addition in the video is a barely visible example of how your Spook senses will sometimes interject cryptic but important insights from their respective domains, even on the world map. Here is a better view for your eyes only:
There are five distinct senses: Echoes, Feels, Eyes, Smacks and Sniffs. In my writing I treat these as distinct characters, and you can see a little bit more from them in this video. In the gif above we get a short snippet from Feels:
"Narrow grooves crisscross in the gravel, zig and zag, zig and zag."
Lastly, a christmas confession...
Originally I had planned to have my first open playtest before the end of 2025, but long story short the build isn't quite where I'd want it to be yet. If you're in my Discord and waiting to sign up: Thank you for your patience, it is coming but I'm gonna need a little more time to get it ready for you.
That's it for this time. Looking forward to sharing more soon, and I wish you all a very happy new year!