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[seras]

SURVIVE THE BLACKOUT

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--What will you sacrifice in order to survive?--
Discover your limits during the fall of civilization in a narrative game
Survive the Blackout.

Survive the Blackout is a post-apocalyptic survival about journey during the fall of civilization.

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The Game

Your main goal is reaching the mysterious Light while keeping the group alive by making tough decisions. In the world shattered by Blackout, that destroyed all electronic devices, there will be no good choices as people are desperate to get on with their lives and survive.

The Light, seems to be last haven of civilisation. What is the Light? Will the characters find refuge there? Or will it be a trap, set by other survivors? One thing is certain - the road is dangerous and many will try to get there at all costs...

One of our characters, Sara

Features

• Discover the world, in which all known electronics were destroyed in a single incident, almost at your eyes.
• Make tough decisions, but be ready to accept the consequences… and that sometimes there are no good choices.
• Lead the team, struggle for survival and face the hardships of new, cruel reality on the way to the mysterious Light.
• Meet the members of your team and uncover their secrets and backstory, and decide how they will manage their day to day lives in the new, shattered world.
• Gather and use your resources wisely, as you never know, when you might need them.
• Discover new elements of the story with each playthrough
• ...all the while enjoying minimalistic and atmospheric pixel art

Release date: 06 Feb 2020
Platform: PC (Steam)

Sample story fragment

We are Baby Bison Games, a five people indie studio from Warsaw, Poland, fighting pixels, crafting code and weaving stories since March 2017.

I plan to post some pieces of info here and in screenshot saturday

So... till next time.

[bryku]

Awesome. I'm in love in all the 'hopeless' game vibes.

Do post more details about the mechanics!

[Davi Vasc]

Looks cool! I'm always in for games that value player choice and decision making.

[seras]

Thank you!

Do post more details about the mechanics!

In one of the coming post I will write a bit more about mechanics

[Tusky]

Awesome. I'm in love in all the 'hopeless' game vibes.

Same here!

Looks interesting! Like the art you've done so far. Looking forward to hearing more

[seras]

Hello there

I promised to talk a bit about mechanics… so here is a video.


So the gameplay is in fact based on player narrative choices that influence statistics.

Your decisions and good statistic management decides if the group will survive.

We were a  bit surprised when it came out that our very-very-early prototype leaked out (maybe I will write about it a bit later), but we were even happier to see warm welcome of the game!

[bryku]

I like the Polaroid photos way of presenting stuff.

How (and will) you manage game replayability? Will the event types (and outcomes) be somehow randomly generated?

Also - are you considering explicitly showing the user the result of their actions (e.g. a clear information who lost/gained any attribute values)? I'm asking as I am a big fan of games that clearly communicate what is the game state.

Lastly - what kind of engine/framework are you using for this? Is it some kind of mutation of Fungus?

[seras]

Hi

It took me some time to reply but it was quite a busy week


In fact high replayability is our main goal.


This is why we focused on numerous factors that impact and create high replayability and will diversify the game:

• different possible team configuration (different available skills and attitudes)
• different resources we will have during each walkthrough
• different ways and attitudes you can finish the game with
• different randomized regions that will get you to the end of the journey
• different events and encounters the player will face on the road
• and in the end, different consequences of our decisions for each in-game event

As events and encounters are our main functionality we have created a dedicated engine responsible for event categorisation, randomisation, triggers, event weight, replayability management etc.


Altogether all of this combined will make a different story with each walkthrough.

Also - are you considering explicitly showing the user the result of their actions (e.g. a clear information who lost/gained any attribute values)?

Regarding that - we’re polishing visual feedback regarding character attributes As you can see above at the moment there is small flash-like animation when you move cursor over one of the event decisions. This flash is suggesting that this attribute will be affected by this decision.


PS. Nope, we’re not using Fungus, but our own solution within engine.

[litHermit]

I love the aesthetics and the vibe of this.
However I have a problem with these pixel fonts in games where there's a lot of important-to-read text. It's not legible enough to just glance it, and instead requires some focusing. (As a graphic designer it was one of my main pet peeves with Cart Life for example, and a reason I haven't played much of it).

[tai]

I love the aesthetics and the vibe of this.
However I have a problem with these pixel fonts in games where there's a lot of important-to-read text. It's not legible enough to just glance it, and instead requires some focusing. (As a graphic designer it was one of my main pet peeves with Cart Life for example, and a reason I haven't played much of it).

Hi, I'm the person responsible for pixels behind the game 
Thanks for your feedback You made a good point.
This problem (with too small pixel font) is still on my 2do list, but frankly, I'm not sure if there is any good solution other than cutting the amount of text or switching font to non-pixel one...
Still, gonna spend sime time meditating on that

[Devilkay]

this game looks very interesting. nice idea

[seras]

Thanks!

Your support means a lot to us 

[NowSayPillow]

The pixel art in this game is gorgeous.

[tai]

The pixel art in this game is gorgeous.

[Taking a break from polishing ingame resources just to look at TIG]

Thanks! Your words gave me extra energy rush to fight those pixels 

[braaaur]

Overall aesthetics are great, the topic is nice and writing seems solid. You got me

[seras]

Hello there

We’re busy crunching, as we are preparing for…



POZNAŃ GAME ARENA!

It is Poland's biggest and most important computer games and entertainment fair, so it’s a pretty big thing

Also we changed the name to SURVIVE THE BLACKOUT

Why the name change? The new version expresses much better the survivalistic character of the game. Also, when we started works on Blackout (more than a year ago!), we didn't know that one of the AAA titles will also use this name - I'm talking about CoD: Blackout.

Stay tuned, as when the crunch finishes, we’ll be posting more

[seras]

It has been an absolutely busy time for us.

First PGA.

As I mentioned it is the biggest biggest and most important computer games and entertainment fair in Poland. It is connected with Game Industry Conference so it was also a chance to learn more in any area connected with game dev. And a chance to meet other game devs

Survive the Blackout was warmly welcomed and we got lots of useful feedback with which we will further work.

Then… Comic Con

Yup, in Poland we also have Comic Con - Warsaw edition. Of course much much smaller than San Diego’s but it is continously growing.

We’ve got last minute’s invitation to the Indie Zone, where again we had a chance to present Survive the Blackout to the wider audience. Interesting experience, I can tell that

Now…

The most important part - we decided to work a bit longer on Survive the Blackout and release it in August 2019.
And we’re back to work some fixes, some minor polishes, some upgrades. But about that - in next post.

[seras]

Hi again,

Writing

One of the main rules for writing is that less is usually better. Writing in games is not about quantity, but having good, straight to the point text.

This is why I mostly fought with words recently, to shorten some bits of the story and make it juicier.

Reads much better, doesn’t it?

but there is one more major change...

We’re on Discord!

You’ll get a chance to
◾️Get insider info
◾️Give us feedback
◾️Become a tester
◾️Get a chance to be... an in-game character!

Come and join us at: >>> https://discord.gg/8ymjHhm

Of course apart from that we're still working on some in-game functionalities, and about that I hope to write in next post. Pretty much to do, so probably it will be in a week or more.



Till next time!

[tai]

During last development stage we added a few new functionalities:

1. Basic management of resources

In the game the player focuses mainly on making tough decisions and statistics management such as health or satiety.

To make it more interesting we added gathering resources, which can influence statistics. So a medkit can increase health and alcohol will slightly increase morale etc.

Resources as such will be pretty rare and valuable, so in the gameplay survival will still be a challenge.

2. Second one is a simple danger mechanic

Making difficult choices during the apocalypse is not only about tough moral dilemma to be taken after a thorough and very careful thought.
Sometimes the situation demands that you make the decision in a matter of seconds.
To pick up the tension and adrenaline we added to some events "danger mechanic" which will restrict time in which player can react. If the player won't choose anything, the game will choose for him - and it will be the worst possible answer.

What do you think about that?

Do you like it?

[tai]

Have you ever dreamed about becoming one of the characters in real game?
We did that as well!

This is why we prepared weekly challenges contest with the biggest prize - your own dedicated story plot, events and characters created especially for you in a narrative survival game set in a dark post-apocalyptic world Survive the Blackout!

First challenge started yesterday, so now it's a perfect moment to join and try your luck!

Join our Discord and get a chance to become an in-game character:

➡️ Join Discord ⬅️