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[Ice Water Games]

Eidolon is a game about exploration, interconnected histories, and curiosity. You explore the distantly-post-apocalyptic Western Washington, uncovering the artefacts left behind by those who came before you, and piecing together their stories. It's an enormous world, both physically and in terms of lore/written content. It's a game for people who like to explore worlds and pursue mysteries in a free-form way.

We've been working on the game for almost a year now, and are hoping to have a demo and trailer done before the new year! My expectation is that it will take 3-6 months after that until a full release of the game.

I'm keeping a more organic devlog for the project here: http://www.icewatergames.com/

I'll probably update this topic sporadically, whenever there are large progress points to report. And also to reply to any feedback, of course!

[adganong]

This looks pretty neat, and I like most everything you said to describe it. I will be keeping my eyes peeled for the trailer release. How much is developed as of right now?

[Ice Water Games]

Thanks adganong!

We've currently got:

• A big lore base and a lot of written content
• A gigantic in-game world that is partially sculpted with the 9 current biomes (coniferous, deciduous, marsh, plains, mudflat, mysterious grove, long-abandoned town, settlement, and ruined city). The art is all done for these, at least first-pass, but the world needs to be fleshed out
• Various edibles around the world (berries, mushrooms, and such)
• Huntable deer (and mostly implemented bears, which hunt you)
• A working bow and fishing rod
• Menu systems, including inventory, map, notes, and a scrapbook for collecting documents
• Save/load system
• Lightweight survival system including hunger and cold
• A large selection of composed music which we are currently working to implement into the game
• A dynamic day/night system as well as dynamic weather
• Probably a bunch of other cool stuff that I'm forgetting

The biggest task ahead of us is making the in-game written history and sculpted world as rich, robust, interesting, and beautiful as possible. Oh yeah and sound effects... probably need to work on that pretty soon here.

[SprouttheGame]

Damn this looks like it could be really really damn cool. Will definitely be watching.

[Ice Water Games]

Damn this looks like it could be really really damn cool. Will definitely be watching.

Thanks, we're pretty excited about it too!

[Floresy]

Spent the morning listening to the music, awesome atmosphere and maintains variety throughout.  Also diggin the whole 2-D layered on 3-D for your art style, i'm excited to see what else you do with it.  Hyped.

[Ice Water Games]

Floresy:

Awesome, thanks! I've relayed your compliments to our musician and he's very appreciative. There's definitely a lot of awesome variety on that soundcloud, since it's taken us a long time to work out where we want the music to be. He's just now selecting tracks from his sketchbook to put into the newest build of the game. It's super exciting how much it brings the world to life.

[Ice Water Games]

We're sculpting out the beginning areas with more care in preparation for the "demo" build (which may or may not ever be really released to the public). Above are shots of a small cabin near where the player first starts, and where some of the first artefacts will be found (probably including a primitive map). We're also working on translating those documents into the game, something I'll probably be doing tonight.

The music is fully implemented, at least to the degree that it will be for the demo build. There are a couple of tracks for each biome, and a maestro object that decides when to play melodic or ambient music and keeps track of where you are. On a similar front, we got together recently to record some sound effects, and those have been implemented. Unfortunately, they make it fairly obvious which things don't yet have sound, but that should be solved soon enough.

I've been working through a long list of little bugs and systems that weren't quite working how they needed to, and that list is getting slimmer and slimmer! I'm getting together with our AI/tool coder this weekend to finish implementing bears :D

It's been a busy couple of weeks!

[Ice Water Games]

Learned to make gifs. Big day.

[Ice Water Games]

Finished our first pass to implement all the most basic systems, and the game felt (unsurprisingly) flat. While we work in content, we're also going to work in more texture to the moment-to-moment play via new systems. First on our list was gatherable tinder, craftable campfires, and a rest system. Done! First-pass at least. I'm really excited to get some particle effects on this thing, I think it's going to look sweet!

[antoniodamala]

this looks really cool man.

[Ice Water Games]

Thanks!! Encouragement much appreciated.

[nss_aries]

This is amazing, one of the best I've seen on these pages so far.
There are some minor tweaks i'd suggest, maybe something you already know (i.e. the stars), but the mood, the setting and the visuals are already beautiful.

Keep up the good work!

g.

[tanner bananer]

I really like this art style! posting to follow. 

[Ice Water Games]

Many thanks, ya'll.

@nss_aries:
I'd love to hear any suggestions, whether they're things I know or not! The stars are still a default texture that I've yet to mess with, as they were the least obnoxious of our defaults. I'm still not really positive what I want to do with the night sky.

edit: Your graphic novel looks incredible! Art advice much desired.

[DanDecarlo]

Looks nice, I find the "Lightweight survival system" interesting.

[Ice Water Games]

Thanks Dan! Right now it really is super lightweight, and that's why I felt the need to specify—just hunger and cold. As we're wanting to add more texture to the gameplay, we're discussing the possibility of adding complications like illness and exhaustion, and I think I want to add wounds that can fester if not treated.

[Ice Water Games]

Reworked the fire to be all particles... I think I like it better this way, but it's not done. I'm excited to add smoke.

Realizing more and more how important 'level design' is going to be in creating interesting gameplay. Hoping to turn towards focusing on that (and other content-type things) after we get our trailer done, just devoting a lot more time to writing and sculpting.

Also made the player's move speed dependent on their state of health, in an effort to make status upkeep more meaningful.

ALSO. We just got featured on Indie Statik and Rock, Paper, Shotgun?! Which is really exciting. Planning on doing a press push in the next month or so, once we can get a trailer out. Was not expecting the game to just be found arbitrarily by such big-name blogs. Really excited about it.

[Ice Water Games]

WE PUT OUR TRAILER UP! Check it out!!

[billyboob]

WE PUT OUR TRAILER UP! Check it out!!

Love the end of the trailer. Great job!

Do you know the dimension of the game world to scale? And I was wondering, will the 'lightweight survival system' have configurable difficulty? Website says pc and mac. Linux?