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[DJWeinbaum]

Website | Twitter | Youtube

Eastshade is a first-person, open world exploration game being developed for PC. I've been working on the game for two years full-time now and its been quite an adventure. I've been doing a devblog on my site and on the Unity Forums, and I wanted to maintain one here as well. I have quite a backlog of posts at this point, but here I'm just going to post a few screenshots to start things off. I'll keep this thread updated from now on.

About the Game

You are a traveling painter, exploring the island of Eastshade. Capture the world on canvas using your artist’s easel. Talk to the inhabitants to learn about their lives. Make friends and help those in need. Discover mysteries and uncover secrets about the land. Surmount natural impasses to reach forgotten places. Experience how your actions impact the world around you.

[sidbarnhoorn]

This looks beautiful. Looking forward to seeing it develop and at some point playing it! :-)

[Jasmine]

Yeah, gonna have to second this. Gorgeous. The premise is interesting, too. Very explorative and the overarching "goal" is vague to the point that the experience can vary greatly player to player.

How does the painting mechanic work? Is the brunt of the game aroundthe people you meet on your journey?

[DJWeinbaum]

Thanks, sidbarnhoorn and M4uesviecr!

How does the painting mechanic work?

I'm going to make a video probably within a week showing off just the painting mechanic. Basically you go into "paint mode", point your camera, choose your cropping, and take a screenshot. Paintings are aware of the time of day you painted, the location you painted from, and certain important objects within the painting, so we've made a few quests where NPCs request for certain paintings. NPCs will also drop subtle hints about things, and if you pay attention to the world, you can make paintings that might mean a lot to certain characters, and offer them the painting and they will respond.

Is the brunt of the game aroundthe people you meet on your journey?

I don't know if I'd say the game is about the people you meet, but conversation is definitely a core component. There's a "topic" system where interacting with objects or walking into a new place will add a topic to your list, then in conversation you can inquire about that topic to anyone, and everyone will have something different to say. I'd say the game is about finding your way to new locations, and trying to change the state of the world.

[Xonatron]

Wow, this looks good. Amazing graphics.

[DJWeinbaum]

Painting is core to the game. Inhabitants will commission certain paintings from you, and some puzzles are solved by making paintings with particular compositions.

Video showing the painting mechanic

[Jasmine]

 

It reminded me of the photography mechanic from Bully (a great and, what I would consider, highly underrated game). Though your aspect is MUCH more picturesque.

Will the player already be a master painter? I.e., they won't have to work or "gain experience" to access different perspectives?  Man, this is exciting! I could play a game like this for hours.

[Pixel Noise]

With how beautiful the game is graphically, I think a lot of players would be happy to just walk around the world and, as you said, talk to people, explore and paint. But is there an ultimate goal? Will the game have a central story or some sort of conclusion? Or will it just be "play until you get bored". (Not saying that's bad or wrong, just curious).

I love the idea - following

[DJWeinbaum]

It reminded me of the photography mechanic from Bully (a great and, what I would consider, highly underrated game). Though your aspect is MUCH more picturesque.

Will the player already be a master painter? I.e., they won't have to work or "gain experience" to access different perspectives?  Man, this is exciting! I could play a game like this for hours.

I'll have to check that game out! Yeah, the player is a master painter right away. There's no leveling up or anything like that. Its totally like photography. We're using painting because I like the more rustic theme.

With how beautiful the game is graphically, I think a lot of players would be happy to just walk around the world and, as you said, talk to people, explore and paint. But is there an ultimate goal? Will the game have a central story or some sort of conclusion? Or will it just be "play until you get bored". (Not saying that's bad or wrong, just curious).

I love the idea - following

At the very least it has as much "goal" as a point-and-click adventure, because progressing through the world and changing the world state requires exploring, questing, and puzzle solving. But yeah, when you play there is definitely a sense you're supposed to be doing something, and there is progression in terms of the schematics you unlock, items you find, and places you get to.

[DJWeinbaum]

Some people (though not on this forum) have gotten the wrong impression about what Eastshade is. That is 100% because we haven't explained the game very well. Our latest post is our attempt to explain what the game is. I'll post it right here:

I want to clear the air about something. I’ve done a terrible job explaining what Eastshade is like to play. Part of that is because this project has been evolving over these two years, but the bigger reason is that my familiarity with the game makes me forget to talk about important points that nobody could possibly know. Jaclyn and I have concocted a concise explanation of what the game is:

“You are a traveling painter, exploring the island of Eastshade. Capture the world on canvas using your artist’s easel. Talk to the inhabitants to learn about their lives. Make friends and help those in need. Discover mysteries and uncover secrets about the land. Surmount natural impasses to reach forgotten places. Experience how your actions impact the world around you.”

Eastshade is a non-violent game; however, it’s not a game without mechanics, progression or goals. To me, a walking sim is a game that forgoes these things and focuses solely on atmosphere. Mechanically, Eastshade is a game that gives players the space to wander. We’ve made an effort to make the world feel alive and responsive as players explore. But there is also a clear sense of direction and progression. Here is a condensed description of the things you can do in Eastshade:


Meet the Inhabitants – Interact with the locals through dynamic conversations with discoverable topics and branching dialogue.


Capture Your Surroundings – Compose paintings anywhere in the world and offer them to characters to gain items, knowledge, and unlock secrets


Find and Craft – Acquire materials and schematics to surmount obstacles.


Interweaving Micro-Stories – Actions and dialogue decisions affect future interactions and outcomes as you meet new characters.

Story wise, Eastshade is not one particular tale that we were burning to tell. In order to allow the player to live the experiences we let go of orchestrating a controlled storyline and focused on building the world at large. To that end, Eastshade is filled with many little stories; each with their own effects and consequences on the state of the world. If you love the distilled sense of place that some walking sims have, Eastshade has it for you. However, if you weren’t a fan of Dear Esther or Gone Home, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will dislike Eastshade.

Hopefully that clears things up a bit, and hopefully the new landing page does a better job of giving newcomers the gist of what the game actually is.

[Pixel Noise]

I like the dialogue system you've described - topics you've discovered or heard about can open up new branches and options for dialogue with other NPCs. Reminds me a lot of some of the older Ultima games. It's been a long time, but I think some of those used a similar dialogue system - where once you'd "discovered" a topic or piece of information, you could go back and ask just about anyone about it, and it would unveil new information, quests, etc.

[DJWeinbaum]

We're proud to present our first trailer!

[io3 creations]

We're proud to present our first trailer!

Seems like something happened with the url because it doesn't seem to work. Until it gets sorted out, here it is:




Looks good!

[DJWeinbaum]

Looks good!

Thanks so much for catching that and posting it! I finally got it to embed. This forum is very confusing for me.

[io3 creations]

Thanks so much for catching that and posting it! I finally got it to embed. This forum is very confusing for me.

You're welcome.

The url seemed strange because there was both an http and https in it.  If you just add the YouTube url (which you probably did in the update) then the board embeds the video.

[ashen]

The landscapes look beautiful, very impressive.

I think the painting/photography mechanic sounds really interesting. I wonder if you could have Npc characters give quests to capture a painting of some specific objects at some time of the day? You could even require certain types of weather. Harder quests would require more difficult combinations. For example, paint a picture of the windmill, with the dawn sun visible, breaking through a morning mist, with a deer in the background.

It would really emphasise the excitement of capturing fleeting moments in time that may never happen again.

Also, it would be fun to be able to paint in different styles, eg. Realist, impressionist, etc.  I imagine this would involve applying different shaders to the painting. It would be make for some very interesting and beautiful scenes when rendered in say watercolour, charcoal, pastel, etc (similar to filters in paint programs).

[DJWeinbaum]

The landscapes look beautiful, very impressive.

I think the painting/photography mechanic sounds really interesting. I wonder if you could have Npc characters give quests to capture a painting of some specific objects at some time of the day? You could even require certain types of weather. Harder quests would require more difficult combinations. For example, paint a picture of the windmill, with the dawn sun visible, breaking through a morning mist, with a deer in the background.

Thanks for the kind words and feedback Ashen! We are like-minded . I'm glad that sounds interesting, because that's exactly our plan! I mentioned a bit about it earlier in this thread.

Paintings are aware of the time of day you painted, the location you painted from, and certain important objects within the painting, so we've made a few quests where NPCs request for certain paintings. NPCs will also drop subtle hints about things, and if you pay attention to the world, you can make paintings that might mean a lot to certain characters, and offer them the painting and they will respond.

I'm thinking I should make it more clear somehow because we're having a really hard time conveying the game to people. The trailer shows an NPC seeing your painting on the wall and commenting on it, and the plan with that was to show that NPC will respond to paintings, but now I'm thinking she should have said something more specific about the painting. We plan on making another trailer but it won't be for a while.

[Pixel Noise]

The "goal" or gameplay of the game is definitely getting clearer - and the trailer helps a lot I think. Seeing the environments and painting mechanic in real time was pretty stunning. Honestly, I think even seasoned reviewers are going to have a hard time summarizing and explaining this one; sort of similar to the recently released "Firewatch". But - you're crafting what looks to be a pretty incredible experience here - so don't worry too much over that at the moment. The more people can see of it with the trailers, the more it will make sense. And even the - it may still be a bit vague, but that may be OK.

[DJWeinbaum]

The "goal" or gameplay of the game is definitely getting clearer - and the trailer helps a lot I think. Seeing the environments and painting mechanic in real time was pretty stunning. Honestly, I think even seasoned reviewers are going to have a hard time summarizing and explaining this one; sort of similar to the recently released "Firewatch". But - you're crafting what looks to be a pretty incredible experience here - so don't worry too much over that at the moment. The more people can see of it with the trailers, the more it will make sense. And even the - it may still be a bit vague, but that may be OK.

Its good to hear we are becoming more effective at explaining the game. Thank you for the encouragement .

[DJWeinbaum]

This might be an interesting list to you fellow game devs: I compiled a list of all our news coverage in the latest blog post.

http://www.eastshade.com/press-roundup/

They are listed very roughly in order of referral traffic.