Greetings! Shake off the dust and join us at the fire for another development diary! Today you will hear the first tale of the Bunker Cats as I walk you through the beginning of the game and give you some design intent along the way.
Afterworld starts off with the player picking an Origin, starting area (depending on origin), and establishing the beginning of your story through prologue choices. You can click the images below to enlarge them.
In this game we are playing a band called Bunker Cats coming from a shelter that has been failing despite our band’s skill at repairing old technology. Armed with some extra guns, they are ready to finally crack open the shelter doors and discover the world above.
I have always enjoyed games that did these little prologue choices and it was one of the things I decided early on that I wanted. I think it works quite well in getting you immersed quickly and making the story your own from the get-go. I would actually say that Afterworld is a game where I want to both be able to have procedural stories, but also assist and immerse you with crafted ones.
So speaking of stories to assist you, the first thing that happens here is that our Rangers have been given a quest to locate safe lands and a longer task to find the location of a second shelter we know is nearby.
Rangers are your explorers and problem solvers. The dustiest of your tribe, and Mark, their leader, has particularly high cunning. We’ll see if that comes in handy later.
At this point in the game we have only our ranger and the quest log. This is part of our approach to making this game easier to get into than some GSGs. Your band has just emerged into a world they know nothing about, and have not even begun to consider diplomacy with others, or supply chains, or their legal system, so you, the player, do not have access to these options yet either. The idea is to slowly unlock things and avoid drowning you in too many new things at once.
The first job of the Rangers will be to scout out the local area so we can relocate somewhere before the shelter’s reactor goes critical.
We have some hint markers on the map to the north where the Rangers believe water and food are likely. They’re also close to a city as you can see tall buildings sticking up in the fog of war. Cities often have valuable things to scavenge but can be more dangerous.
Looks like we found some pawpaws (it’s a real thing look it up) and some harvestable wood.
While we explore, the shelter reactor finally goes critical and the rest of our band packs up and escapes. The explosion also contaminates the area with radiation and deforms the terrain so it's definitely time to leave.
We have food and water in the explored area, but our people are really not in a very good situation otherwise. The land has both radiation and quite low fertility, so I guess farming is off the table for now. But right now we do not have too many options - we need that food and water after losing the shelter so we set course towards the north.
Because our first spot is not very good, we choose to keep the new settlement light and mobile rather than commit to this place. We need to find somewhere better (Afterworld encourages you to move often, very different from our other games!).
Having settled and caught our breath we unlock a new mechanic: the Idea Tree. The Idea Tree is a bit like classic tech trees with inspirations from HOI4’s focus trees, but built dynamically based on your experiences. It's really exciting and cool, but I will dig into them more in the future! Here you can see that we have a custom one based on our Origin where we can start.
Because I need resources, I am going for Outposts as soon as I can to start expanding my borders on the map and get access to more areas. Meanwhile we have started taking water from the nearby river and harvesting the paw-paw fruits for food to replenish our stores.
Stores are filling up, but we will go deeper into economy in future diaries!
With the shelter established and our people getting to work, we complete the starting quest, giving the Bunker Cats a new memory and pride in survival. In fact it is enough for them to start developing new customs. I will go into how that works more in a future dev diary, but the end result was that they became more self reliant.
These are values that will help us develop in good directions, lower mortality and give us very nice output bonuses to hunting type workways.
While all this was going on, our Rangers have not sat idle and have been pushing further north. On the outskirts of town they found something troubling and strange. Mark luckily understands something of these nanite-related phenomena and knows ways to approach it and gain insights into the dustlands.
Past the haint, the squad also discovered some old car wrecks that could be salvaged - and finally something worth reporting home about! A green healthy forest just north of the city that looks like a great permanent home perhaps?
Next dev diary we will continue the story and we will see the Bunker Cats form a tribe, discover the location of other shelter… and have tea with a suspiciously friendly band of slavers?!?
And so, we return to the Turns Expedition who continue their journey below. Next time you see us in a Dev Diary will be in two weeks time, on September 30th, with the continuing tale of the Bunker Cats. May your journey be a safe one.
Turns Expedition - Interview Excerpt.
Subject: water-merchant, Central California dustlands.
Subject operates a barter-well near the edge of a large stretch of dustland. He has a commercial incentive to exaggerate, perhaps, but his description accords with my experiences.
I see the dustlands when I close my eyes. Walk there long enough and you’ll see it too. Dry earth, red sky. Can’t see the horizon behind the dust clouds. You walk all day and it’s like you’re standing still. Folk fall asleep on their feet walking there. It’s true, it’s true.
There’s no roots, so the land goes where it likes. Set dustbreaks around your camp or you’ll wake up buried. Don’t breathe the dust. Keep it off your skin. You can’t outrun sky-sickness [Radiation poisoning] forever, but you can keep ahead of it a while.
Folk say the dustlands are death. I say that’s wrong. Death rots, rot grows. The dustlands are emptiness. But there’s potential in emptiness too. The world’s still young, and there’s things out in the dusts well worth seeing. Flocks of feral drones in flight. Ruined towers so high you can’t see the top. Sungazer monks staring into the sky, burning out their own sight. Gulleys where the flash floods rush through, and crawling things making damp life under the gulleys.
Folk say this land was beautiful before the Fall. I say it’s beautiful right now. Someday folk will be back to scribble on all that dust, fill it with farms and cities and war machines. Maybe I’ll live long enough to miss the dustlands.
I don’t talk people out of going through the dusts. Used to try. Never convinced a single soul. If your destiny lies out that way then you know it, and I’m not the one to tell you any different.
[In this case “the dustlands” indicates an area of extreme soil degradation. Note that “The Dustlands” is also commonly used to indicate “the world,” and “dustlanders” its inhabitants.]