After over 2 years of development. We are finally releasing a demo for Woodland Rebels! It has been quite the development journey. A big thank to all the dev team, playtesters, and everyone who is going to play our demo!
Woodland Rebels World
Some of the early concept arts for the game, made by one of our artists Eryono. Showing the Rabbit Town, Squirrel Town, and Human Town.
What we are trying to create with Woodland Rebels is a world that feels alive. A world different from other fantasy worlds. I've always been a big fan of world-building and fantasy universes, and creating a survival game was the best way that we found to bring this world alive.
In this world, spirits of the forest are awakening and turning animals into villager form, giving them the ability to defend themselves against humans by crafting tool, building settlements, and talking to each other! When a NPC villager dies, their body returns to their original form and the spirit is freed, it will roam around until it finds another animal to transform.
The villager animals start to gather into small settlements, declaring war on each other, assigning roles such as knights, druids, outlaws, farmers or leaders. But while the animals are busy with their quarrels about food, items and other things, humans are coming to the Woodlands!
Your role is to convince the animals to unite as one, and face off the humans!
Sandbox Survival with Colony Sim elements
Woodland Rebels would fit best in these genre:
Survival because of the constant dangers the player is trying to overcome, from hunger, natural disasters, cold, darkness and enemies, but also because you control a main character and all the crafting and building available.
Sandbox because the game doesn't really force you into any playstyle, there are so many different ways to play and you can completely ignore the main scenario and go around build your town, attack other towns, steal from villagers, or just explore the world and interact with villagers in the wild. The world is also procedurally generated.
Colony Sim because NPC villagers that you meet can perform all kind of actions for you. They can help you find resources, guide you to specific locations, teach you recipes. They can also join your town and be assigned roles that will determine the tasks that they will automatically perform, their mood and anger must also be managed or revolts could happen.
Scenario Based Game
To increase replayability, the game will feature several different scenarios that determine how the world is generated and which events will happen during the game. The demo includes one FULL scenario: Rise of the Rebellion. Other scenarios are still under development and planned for the full game.
Rise of the Rebellion (AVAILABLE): In this scenario, your goal is to unite the scattered animal towns, convince them to join your rebellion and ultimately attack the human town. This scenario serves as an introduction to the game, teaching you on how to start recruiting rebels, improve your reputation with the towns, equipping followers, and building a rebel camp to attack the humans. For this reason this scenario is meant to be easier with less enemies and more forgiving events, but can still be quite challenging when unfamiliar with the game.
The Human Queen (Unreleased): This scenario will focus on defending a bigger town against humans. You will need to make sure villagers have everything they need in the town to keep the moral up, because villagers with low morale don't fight very well. Be ready to endure waves of human enemies, get the help of nearby settlement to help you defend the town, and use everything at your disposal such as traps, allies and nature. This scenario will present a much bigger challenge and it will be possible to FAIL (unlike the first scenario). It will also probably be a good option as a first scenario with co-op features (not available yet).
Curse of the Evil Spirits (Unreleased): This scenario will move away from the conflict with humans, and start exploring what happens when the animals over-utilize their newly found abilities. Solve the mysteries of the Woodland, learn more about the origin of the woodland spirits, and help lift the curse before all animals turn evil.
Endless mode (Unreleased): A way to play without a goal, for an even greater sandbox experience. The idea would be to improve the current systems to make the world evolve more on its own, such as the ability to create your own towns, or for NPC villagers to create them. The ability to destroy towns, and the various towns to declare war on each other. Be prepared for a much more random, chaotic but exciting experience!
IMPORTANT NOTE: Those are our current ideas for the game, but they may change if we find that one of those don't work well, or we get a better scenario idea. We may completely rework or rename a scenario if needed.
Update from Playtest
If you were part of the playtest, and want to see the list of changes since we started the playtest, you can see the list here: View game page
PvE Survival Fest
In less than 2 weeks, Woodland Rebels demo will be featured in the PvE Survival Fest on Steam. Please stay tuned for more info about the event (and a small content update).
Really Good Video Explaining the Game
Ser Medieval had a really good time with game and made a video on his channel recently talking about the game features. It explains very well what it's about if you're looking for more information.
He also has a 6 hours stream (split into two parts) in the live section of his videos. I really recommend checking his channel.