Vatnsmyrkr. The unimaginative, but nonetheless pretty, Old Norse for 'water darkness'~
A bit of concept art, and the actual game that now looks a lot like it.
What is it? This is a side-scrolling game set mostly underwater, letting the player steer a little submarine in order to distangle more and more of a couple of intertwined and not so merry backstories through puzzles and problem solving and narration through immersion and little visual cues instead of text.
The idea is to try to keep the game as free as possible from distractions and reminders of the fact that it really is a game. No deaths or failures. This doesn't mean that the game is put on rails, but that if the player does fail to do something, the game is going to offer other ways to go about moving on from there which may also set the player on different subpaths during replays depending on which path is taken. The ending will remain the same no matter the subpath, however.
A HUD or interface floating on top of the screen is also something that's going to be avoided. There will be elements sometimes, but largely, the idea is to keep the viewport a non-cluttered window into the game's world.
Gameplay Some basic philosophies...
Make progress, not war.There is exploration to do and there are puzzles to solve. Vatnsmyrkr, however, lacks the violence that govern games in general, and instead highlights more of a defensive or stealthy way of going about things, even though more fast-paced and action-packed scenes are being pondered as well. The need to do some thinking for oneself, to figure out the subtle clues of the story, and to solve problems, is prioritised above mindless hacking and slashing.
Dark mood.The atmosphere of this experience will be a somewhat heavy, murky and gloomy one. On a fine line between cozy and eerie. Beautiful. This will manifest itself through all of the media involved, including the graphics, the music, the pacing and the storytelling, the latter of which will be fairly obscure and lend itself to the player’s own imagination and depend largely on the determination and will to do the exploration required to figure things out. Even then, there may be things that remain unclear, which is precisely the intention.
Abstraction from needless characteristics.The very protagonist of the game is hidden away inside of the submarine, never shown to the player and never giving any cues to very specific traits besides the important, emotional ones – the outer appearance of this character is irrelevant to, and rather a hinderance of, the way in which this story is to be told. It is all about the player's immersion into the character and the world down below.
A very, very old video, with almost no graphics, showing some puzzle mechanics in a flooded tower.
Submarine To give you a basic idea of the fundamentals, here is some info about the sub and how the player can use it to interact with the game.
Spotlight.This is the obvious mechanic. It can be turned on and off, and the range of the light cone can be adjusted. A smaller angle gives brighter light and the other way around. As the submarine goes deeper beyond the epipelagic zone, the waters become increasingly dark. Near the surface, however, the light might not always be completely necessary.
Sonar.There will be sections of the game where the light won't work and one will have to rely on sonar navigation. A tiny orb of light coming from the tank and windows will surround the submarine even in these situations, tho, as well as the beautiful bioluminescence of the jellyfish motor. Even when the light is working, the sonar can be used to locate things or perhaps to scare spooky animals off. Unless they are attracted by it...
Magnet.This is by far the most versatile tool. It's an electromagnet whose magnetism can be toggled at the right times. It also functions as a claw, able to grip and hold on to things. But the magnet isn't locked to the sub. It's attached to a chain and may be fired like a hookshot in order to cling on to things further away, either to pull them to the boat or the boat to them. It may also be carefully lowered to haul things up from smaller cracks. Perhaps items located by the sonar.
Outdated GIF showing some interaction with the water surface. See below for new submarine sprite.
Tech I'm making my own portable engine alongside the game, and so I can at least guarantee an eventual release for OS X, Linux and Windows.
The engine written in modern C++ and called
Karhu. Based on SDL2, it uses OpenGL and GLSL for graphics and SoLoud for audio. It allows for scripting in AngelScript.
As such, it might take a little longer than usual to get things done, but it's fun to have all this control. I'm currently playing around a lot with graphics programming in order to figure out how to set the mood using fancy shaders and effects.
The primary input method will be a gamepad (Xbox or PlayStation style), with rumble and all!
A recent screenshot with dynamic lighting, dynamic shadows and normal maps.
Sprites are prerendered 3D models with correct normal maps in order to emulate 3D lighting.