Hello to everyone, I’m here to introduce the game we’re working on, since we finally have some decent stuff to show around and we won't be ashamed of it.
tl;dr overview of the gameIcy is a dialogue based RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world where a new Ice Age stormed our beloved planet. The player will be the leader of a nomads group and will have to take difficult decisions to survive against all kind of dangers. The game will offer a lot of dialogues and meaningful choices capable of affecting the plot, but also a survival gameplay that will allow the player to hunt for food, scavenge for items and fight against beasts, monsters and other humans.
Features• Live a survival experience in a peculiar post-apocalyptic setting.
• Affect the plot with different choices, without moral dualism.
• Manage a group of survivors, each one with different needs, ethics an ideals.
• Scavenge for items and hunt for food to survive into the Froz n World.
• Enjoy hundreds of hand drawn artworks.
Long and possibly boring overview of the gameIcy will be a narrative and interpretative experience: the player will create his/her character and play through a branching story with a free gameplay, allowing for a deep and satisfying roleplaying experience.
Icy won’t appear so different compared to a visual novel and there will be a lot of common features, since the game will feature a narrative built with lots of texts and 2D images. But dialogues won’t be the only gameplay mechanic, because Icy is a game about survival in a dangerous world, where humanity is scattered and few in numbers. The player will be able to freely travel around the Frozen World moving his party on a map, which will also allow the player to hunt for food and scavenge in search for ancient treasures. Travelling is part of a nomad daily routine, but that doesn’t make it less risky since the world is full of dangers of any sort and quite often those dangers are born from other humans' actions and needs.
We worked to create a believable setting to let it be the core of all narrative and gameplay.
The world is in a permanent winter state and this have a lot of different consequences on human life. On a biological side humanity has evolved to live in temperate climate ecosystems and, thanks to the progress, has been able to adapt to different climates. But what happens when most of the progress you achieved just collapses leaving nothing but ruins behind? Our society depends on things like electricity, internet, roads or industries creating most of the goods we use in our life. But when the humans left on the planet are less than a million people and most of them are forced to live with a nomadic lifestyle, those things cannot just keep working.
A new society was born out of this context: nomad and sedentary people often interact to exchange resources. The nomads are able to find a lot of ancient relics when travelling around the world and scavenging the ruined buildings searching for pre-apocalypse useful objects is one of their primary activities, they have also the possibility to constantly hunt and gather some food, since without that moving they don't depletes all the resource in any single area. A nomad group can be composed of just five people, but bigger groups can go up to one hundred folks who survive thanks to their big herds which provides them meat and food. Those people needs to travel every day to find new pastures, since the harsh climate condition doesn't provide much food to their animals. On the opposite side, sedentary people usually have one or more resources to barter with travellers who visit them. Some settlements are completely self-sufficient and they trade their surplus goods, others heavily rely on trade to provide supplies to their inhabitants but usually have some important resource to trade, like weapons or tools.
Life is easier living in a settlement, but it's always a hard life. Sedentary people must work for most of the day and live in constant fear of being attacked, since the richness that lies in all the settlement lures all kind of bandits. Living as a nomad is even harder, because they struggle every day for survival and many dangers lie on their path: wild beasts, snowstorms, bandits. All nomad activities are characterized by an ever present danger: during a hunt a wolf pack can attack the hunters, the scavenger searching a building may die in a collapse, each night the temperature drops and without a proper shelter people may freeze to death.
Working on the game we have different goals:
- First of all, we want Icy to be a deep and consistent roleplaying experience, full of meaningful choices able to affect the plot. We didn’t create an ice apocalypse just to put tons of snow in all the artworks, we created it to be the game’s core. The main plot, the secondary storylines, the optional dialogues: all narrative elements are born from the setting and will perfectly fit in it.
- Our second goal is to create a long and rewarding experience. We created a particular setting and we need time to let the player enjoy it, that’s why Icy can’t last just a couple of hours. That wouldn’t even be honest, why should someone buy a short game where all the good ideas are just underdeveloped?
- Our third goal is to create an entertaining game. That means correctly balancing all the different elements to create something that the player will be glad to play, hopefully more than once. Frozen World will feature lots of dialogues, but having tons of long and boring dialogues won’t create a fun game, it will only let us brag about the number of dialogues in the game. Placing thousands of fight into the game won’t make it funnier, it will only make fighting something boring and cheap. Balancing between different features is of the utmost importance.
I'll post some images using direct links, since they seem too big to fit.
Artworkshttp://www.innervoid.net/web/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Junkyard.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/QCAPrW8.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/B9DK8MI.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/GJELxjX.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/0YDOyIR.jpgScreenshotshttp://i.imgur.com/BmOwphE.jpghttp://www.innervoid.net/web/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Icy1.jpghttp://www.innervoid.net/web/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Icy2.jpghttp://www.innervoid.net/web/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/3.jpghttp://www.innervoid.net/web/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/1.jpgAnd we’ll try to be available for any kind of questions, criticism and insults!
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