next »

[talhakaya]

SOUL SEARCHING

A game by Kayabros about surviving on sea

I'm Talha Kaya. Together with Tarık Kaya, we are Kayabros, a game developer from Turkey.

I'm making a game called Soul Searching. The player will try to survive on the sea. It's a top-down survival game with resource management.

Story: There is a village in the game, that has a tradition of teenagers sailing to sea to become more respectable and grown up. The legends tell about the souls on the sea, giving wisdom to poor minds. Nobody really knows if these creatures are real, but they believe in them, and built a whole tradition onto that. If a person decides to go on soul searching, he/she sails away from the village. Most of the soul searchers come back a few days after sailing, because survival is hard on sea. Some searchers never come back, so they are assumed dead, but some believe they found a new place to live. They talk about a distant land full of souls on far west. If you find that place, you will be a hero with songs written for you.



You decide to go on soul searching, and your adventure begins.

You can use oars of your small boat to direct the boat. You can fish, and eat the fish you catch. If you find an island you can gather fruits and get water. There are day-night transitions. You have to sleep to gather energy to survive. You have to drink water, you have to eat fish and fruits.

You can talk to village people, and try to be more informed about the dangers awaiting on the sea, to get a better chance of survival on the sea. There will be mysteries evolving around the souls on the sea. It's up to you to find out about distant lands and souls.

I'll update this post with new stuff and when a demo is available. Check out these Vines to see the game in motion:

Fishing:
https://vine.co/v/MFjqaDHgvOT

Swimming:
https://vine.co/v/MUUpBKWY9jw

[Oxeren]

Story sounds interesting. Did player's character just decided to go to the sea, or is he engaged in this coming of age ritual? Will be following this project.

[talhakaya]

Thanks! As you said, the main character is engaged in coming of age ritual. This is not a mandatory ritual, not every teen has to do it. But the ones that do it become wiser and more respectable.

At the start of the game we say goodbye to our parents and the other village people. For the village people this is a celebration party, because someone has chosen to go on soul searching.

[dancing_dead]

sounds like a neat little idea. will keep an eye on progress 

[talhakaya]

Day and night transition: https://vine.co/v/OB9q1ea3gnO

I should update you about what's going on with this game these days. It's actually pretty exciting days for the project. Today I held playtest sessions with a few friends, and all feedback was positive. The playtesters (who are game devs themselves) really believed in the project and said I should keep working hard on it and it might turn out to be great.

The current build just lets you try to survive on the sea with a very limited skill set: fishing, controlling the boat, swimming, sleeping, eating, drinking. And if you come across islands, you can gather fruits from them, and refresh your water supply. That's it. The good news is, game is fun even in this state, which is the first time something like this happens to me. The concept of "trying to survive on a vast sea" already works, and fires up the player's imagination. The project being fun at this state is the biggest reason for me to think seriously about this project as a potential "big scope" game I want to make, while I want to keep the story and the main theme I'm going for in the game as best as I can. I don't want to lose the "soul" of "Soul Searching".

This project is actually very easy to add stuff in, which is kinda scary. It's an infinite content beast. I could easily decide to add things like hunting, character creation, economy, items, boat upgrades, cruise members like in FTL, etc. All these would help the game in some way or another, but I have to be very careful because the scope is getting bigger exponentially!

Also, I've got some comment on the game's look from a professional artist, and it made me think that I might work with an artist on this project. Even though I like this look of the game, it was just something I did out of hurry and impatience. It was a way for me to optimize the development length of the game. But now the project actually seems like it could mount up to something, I started thinking about the other possibilities.

So after the playtesting, I'm left with very useful ideas for making the game more interesting. It's the luxury of playtesting with game designers. They come up with stuff you can't. I believe already that some of these ideas are essential for the game to work better (like adding a binocular to the boat to look for islands). Some of them are stuff that makes the scope bigger and the game deeper, but are not essential.

If I team up with an artist, I'd want the artist to also be a game designer like myself, making conscious decisions about the game together. Right now I've got a good candidate for that, but time will tell what will happen.

I've never had a project before that playtesting was so essential. This is why I might think about releasing it as an Early Access title maybe? I'm really hesitant on Early Access because I'm not a big fan of it myself as a player. I'll probably just playtest a lot, maybe have a demo version that I'd get playtest results from until the game releases.

Oh, local coop! Should I add that? Maybe I should add that! See how these big ideas that'd take months just come and try to make the scope bigger? Uh, local coop would be so good. Okay, this game will release on 2020 and have the longest devlog in history.

Thanks for reading! Keep soul searching!

[kraed]

Really loving the vibe and look, the concept seems promising. The current look just needs a bit of touching up and will work brilliant. I sent you an email about playtesting (and some extra stuff), would love to try the game out. 

I personally wouldn't go crazy with scope or new features just yet, the current core sounds fun and there is probablly a lot of things it allows you to explore in design without adding extra mechanics. I do want to see more of the "soul" in this as well.

Keep at this, want to start my soul search soon.