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[Ant]

So Echoes of the Wilds (maybe change name?) is ma next gam...

The basic premise is it's wilderness survival with randomised elements, discovering varying areas to exploit resources and make items to ease your basic needs as well as oddities to uncover special areas. There's going to be two gamemodes - a story mode and endless mode. The endless mode is you simply surviving for as long as you can through the years, while the story mode simplifies some survival aspects and plays out a short narrative tale.

It's going to be a weaving random world that's difficult for me alone to playtest - so I'm making the indev build of Endless mode public. If you've got any suggestions I'm happy to hear them. Then later on I'll work on Story mode in private and finish everything off with the help of a few testers. It's still pretty early on indev, a fair few things are quite ropey which you'll have to excuse for a bit - my main focus is sorting out all the gameplay aspects.

download

And here be some shots from the early freeware build. I'm planning on toning down some of the more silly fantasy stuff like the floating head and ghost dude - instead the fantasy stuff will be slightly more veiled. I really like the tone in Swords and Sorcery, that's the feel I'm looking for, though I'd also like to make it feel much more creepy at times.





For a previous rpg-type project I found it really useful having a document that basically outlined everything in the game. Mainly just for keeping track, but it's nice for having a read through and see things you don't notice when just playing through alone - also it's easier for you fine folk to get the jist of the game and offer suggestions. I'll be keeping it all up to date, the red text being the stuff that's planned but not yet added.

[Ant]

Time
Each day you'll have a certain amount of time, but it isn't played in real-time, so once you're at an area you can take your own pace exploring it. However, once it nears nightfall the darkness will close in in real-time so you'll have to be sharpish unless you have a torch, if you don't have a torch then you cannot interact with the world or build tools. The day is split into 8 'slots' which are used up when travelling to an area, different areas use up different amounts of time.

Stamina
Stamina is effectively your 'life bar'. You'll need to keep this topped up by eating foods. Doing activities like running and chopping at trees reduces it, as does other stuff, like heading off into the cold mountains without clothes. Once your stamina is reduced to zero you diiee.

Thirst
Thirst is similar to stamina but increases/decreases in different ways. When reduced to zero it slowly reduces your stamina.

Tools
The core mechanic aside from keeping your stamina up is finding resources to build and maintain gear. You can build gear with the right resources, but you'll need to learn how to make them first which is discovered via special altars. Also gear breaks over time so need to be repaired or replaced. Generally I'm not going for a super realistic simulator, to make an axe you just need some wood and stone.

Weather
Random chance of happening based on Season, lasts for a day.
Rain: Chance of torches not lighting. Wood added to the camp fire has less worth. Windy areas reduce more stamina if unclothed. Increases amount of mushrooms, decreases chance of catching fish.
Snow, Sleet, Winds, Heatwave

Seasons
After a certain amount of days the season will change and affect oh so many things.

Status Effects
Flu: Chance of catching if campfire wasn't lit overnight. Doubles stamina loss from activities. Chance of recovering each night if campfire is lit.
Poison: Slowly reduces a set amount of stamina and thirst. Stamina gained from eating is halved.
Sniffles, Achey Muscles, Hayfever

[Ant]

Areas
There's two different types of area, ones you can visit and ones you can explore. The 'explore' areas are randomly generated each time you go there and represent the wider wilderness (e.g. Forests, Highlands, etc). The 'visit' areas are only randomly generated when you first discover them, after which they remain the same each time you visit. The way you discover areas is via a Scout option where there's just a random chance of you finding nothing or an area of interest and is influenced by items and what existing areas you have found. Maybe add a chance of coming across special random events, and finding weird stuff and new areas inside of the explore areas. Generally each area will have a main purpose for visiting and there's a chance of coming across rarer resources.

//visit areas

Camp
The main area which you must return each night to sleep. Each night you must have enough wood to keep the fire lit through the night otherwise you lose more stamina. You can build camp upgrades, both useful and cosmetic. Maybe add an option to move your base camp to a new area? Food can be cooked on the fire. Food can rot over night.

Fishing Pond
Resources: Mushrooms, Small Fish, Big Fish
Special: Stocks max 8 fish. Each night replenishes 1 fish. Can drink from pond, high chance of poison.

Rocky Woods
Resources: Blue Rock

Berry Woods
Resources: Berry Bush
Special: Small random chance of bush producing berries each night if already picked.

Rabbit Warren

Altar
If presented with a food offering there's a chance of it bestowing knowledge upon you allowing you to make new gear. Each food type has a rating so better food increases the chance, but if unsuccessful it still keeps track of the 'score' so nothing is wasted. There's two types of Altar, Forest and Rocky. I'm planning on adding many more and maybe add some sort of puzzle/explore trial that needs completing first before you can start using the altar.

Forest items: Meed Torchlet, Blue Spine Saw, Blue Spine Spade, Fishing Rod Twine, Rabbit Snare, Meed Patch, Meed Torch, Rabbit Hat, Rabbit Shoes, Rabbit Gloves, Meed Top, Amulet of Altar Seeker
Rocky Items: Stone Spade, Stone Hammer, Stone Axe, Fishing Rod Jazcane, Palmsack, Brown Spade, Brown Hammer, Brown Axe, Amulet of Nighty, Amulet of Breaky, Amulet of Energy, Dynite Axe

The Ends - story mode only
Basically serves as a 'continue' when all stamina is lost. If you run fast before the shadow touches you then you spawn back at your camp site but you lose all the items you were carrying and wearing. Getting caught by the shadow is game over. Each time you enter The Ends the shadow gets slightly faster.


//exploration areas

Forests
Resources: Tree, Small Tree, Berry Bush, Mushrooms, Blue Spine, Deer

Highlands
Resources: Blue Rock, Small Blue Rock, Small Tree, Remileaf, Carrot, Rabbit, Jazcane
Special: Cold winds slowly reduce your stamina unless wearing clothing.

Streams
Resources: Tree, Small Tree, Mushrooms, Berry Bush, Small Fish, Big Fish
Special: Can drink from stream, fully quenches thirst.

Beaches
Resources: Palm Tree, Coconut, Crab
Special: Chance of there being a message in a bottle which provides clues or a map to a buried item.

Rockies
Resources: Blue Rock, Small Blue Rock, Brown Rock, Small Brown Rock, Jazcane, Dynite

Marshes
Resources: Meed, Pyrus, Small Fish, Eel
Special: Can drink from marsh, small chance of poison.

Jungles
Caves
Aeither: Some sort of item that portals you to a weird alternate version of the area you're in - contains special resources and dangers

[Ant]

//items

Food - increases stamina when eaten
Berry (red, blue, purple, yellow), Carrot, Fish Small (Cooked), Fish Big (Cooked), Offal (Cooked), Coconut Innards

Special Foods
Mushroom (Red, yellow, pink, blue): Random chance of some colours poison
Remileaf: Removes Flu and Poison

Tools
For chopping: Blue Spine, Blue Spine Saw, Stone Axe, Brown Axe, Dynite Axe
For smashing: Stone Hammer, Brown Hammer
For digging: Blue Spine Spade, Stone Spade, Brown Spade
For hunting:  Fishing Rod Twine, Fishing Rod Jazcane, Rabbit Snare

Torches
Meed Torchlet, Meed Torch, Coconut Lantern

Clothes - Lessens stamina loss in windy/cold areas
Meed Top, Rabbit Hat, Rabbit Gloves, Rabbit Shoes, Deer Coat

Special Gear
Palm Sack: Increases carry amount by 4
Amulet of Altar Seerker: When carried, increases chances of finding altars
Amulet of Nighty: When carried, slows the rate the night sets in
Amulet of Breaky: When carried, reduces the chances of a tool breaking
Amulet of Energy: When carried, reduces stamina loss from activities

Resources - used for making tools - wood items can be thrown on campfire
Wood, Woodlet, Stick, String, Palm Tree Leaf, Palm Wood, Palm  Woodlet, Stone Blue, Stone Brown, Meed, Meed Patch, Twine, Jazcane, Pelt Rabbit, Coconut Shell, Dynite Shard, Pyrus

Camp Upgrades
Meed Blanky: Lessens stamina loss overnight - especially from cold
Map: Doubles the amount of Visit/Explore areas you can 'remember'
Workbench: Doubles the amount of buildable items you can 'remember'
Journal: Allows you to save your game (must use berry to save)
Remi Box: Reduces the chance of food rotting
Wardrobe: Store clothes
Repairer: Repair tools at resource cost

[adamprack]

This is a pretty cool concept, and I love the look!  I'm usually not as into pixel art as many others, but you're doing some really neat things with it.  The mask thing, the nighttime shots, the trees going into the fog in the distance--they all look neat and you're doing a lot with a relatively small amount of pixels.  Good luck with it all!

[Kurt]

Your transluscent...
YOUR...
 

[Ant]

So I think what I'll probably do is make the demo version first (goes from the start to Winter) and make the indev public so people can test that out - offer feedback and report bugs so I can get that all stable. Then after that work on the story/endless modes with a few testers.

So for a bit I'll just be chopping and changing stuff to get the base ready for playing then I can start adding new stuff.


@adamprack Thanks! Yeah I'm hoping to work on the look and feel of the game a lot more - make it all feel more lively. There's some really awesome atmospheric wilderness type games on here that's inspiring me on. 

@kurtss Heh oh there's more where that came from...

[jO]

Love the premise of the concept as well as the artwork you have created so far!

[Eigen]

These are your favourite colors, arent they? It's cool to see this sort of continuity between your projects.

I really like the concept and I'll try out the freeware version / demo as soon as I can. The different environments look sweet. Especially I like the one with the "totems". The metallic UI doesn't quite fit in my mind but that's no biggy.

[Ant]

So I've just been figuring out what I want to do with the game, which I think I've got a handle on. Put together the Endless build and updated the first post with what I'm planning. Just working on game stuff randomly at the moment.

Something I wouldn't mind feedback on is the controls since people seem to complain about them a fair bit but I'm not sure how I can simplify them.

Code:

// Player Controls
------------------
Left/Right Arrow - Walk left/right. Double-tap to run 
Up/Down Arrow - Examine world object 
S - Pickup dropped item. If speech panel is open then continues speech or exits 
A - Open Panel Screen 

// Panel Controls 
-----------------
Arrow Keys - Move selector 
S - Select. On the Inventory panel this will highlight an item, you can then swap items by pressing S over another slot, use an item on another item by pressing D or drop the item by moving the selector off the panel. 
D - On the Inventory and Resources panel this will use the item. For example, food can be consumed and if you're stood in front of a tree then you can chop it down using an axe or a blue spine plant. 
A - Exit 

@jO Cheers, the artwork in your game is really spiffy btw 

Eigen Heh I do loves ma pink +teal/cyan. Cheers yeah I'm planning on adding pretty much as many environments I can think of really... oh and the HUD is supposed to be stone.

[DAISHI]

I love pixel style, and this looks intriguing!

[barley]

Something I wouldn't mind feedback on is the controls since people seem to complain about them a fair bit but I'm not sure how I can simplify them.

Code:

// Player Controls
------------------
Left/Right Arrow - Walk left/right. Double-tap to run 
Up/Down Arrow - Examine world object 
S - Pickup dropped item. If speech panel is open then continues speech or exits 
A - Open Panel Screen 

// Panel Controls 
-----------------
Arrow Keys - Move selector 
S - Select. On the Inventory panel this will highlight an item, you can then swap items by pressing S over another slot, use an item on another item by pressing D or drop the item by moving the selector off the panel. 
D - On the Inventory and Resources panel this will use the item. For example, food can be consumed and if you're stood in front of a tree then you can chop it down using an axe or a blue spine plant. 
A - Exit 

I'd stick with the standard and use:

Esc - exit
Space - select item
Tab - panel
E - use/pickup (could be examine too unless there's a chance it could clash with picking up)

Those are the intuitive keys for those functions and they're pretty standard, so you'll get people being a lot less confused.

[devi ever]

Any chance you can upload it somewhere other than box... would prefer not to have to sign up for another service to check this game out... looks interesting so far and would definitely like to give it a go.  Followed! 

[ink.inc]

i remember seeing mockups for this a year or two back; good luck

[Pixelulsar]

Looks good from the pictures and the concept seems cool.  I always like wilderness survival games. There is a bunch of interesting stuff in that huge list, plus I think doing a list like that is a good idea.

[Siddha]

Please, caiys, can't get your creation for days!  So true: "Any chance you can upload it somewhere other than box". Make some mirrors, the fan of your art is waiting 

[ericmbernier]

Is this still going? It sounds great, and I saw it bubble up to the top of the devlogs recently. Well, everything sounds great except the heat waves and getting the flu. That doesn't sound fun at all

[Ant]

Sorry for not replying chaps and cheers for the kind words. Yeah I'm still working on this but I'm crap with devlogs so won't be updating this, though I do post screenshots sometimes on my twitter. I'm hoping to finish it September-ish.