Hey people,
I did a thing for a recent GameJam, and I like it, so I'll continue building it.
It's called FROSTKERN - yes, all capitals. A brainfart told me that I could pull off a Rammstein-style title without localization, like some ancient Japanese games. Also the words themselves are recognizable enough to be understood by English-speaking people.
Some pictures, click for full size:
Gameplay-wise you can collect and throw rocks right now, which trigger pressure plates in addition to your own weight. There's also levers and buttons. There's four "puzzles" right now which when solved open a room with a large wall mosaic as a "reward". There was much more planned than this, I even missed the whole GameJam topic, but that's largely because of the technology.
The technology in question being my Surface Shaders framework that I occasionally showed off here on TigSource. It's a content creation engine that takes your rough level blocks and - in theory - blows it up to highres textures and meshes procedurally. That in itself is not new, and right now it sure looks bland because right now it only emits flat surfaces. But in a distant future this system should produce rocky walls, sand on the ground piling up on edges, the ground around a tree root rising, leaves laying on the ground under a tree, stone walls carved into the rock with visible mortar edges... all generated on the fly in exactly the required resolution while the player is coming closer.
The other issue I'm pondering is: are grid-based crawlers even a thing anymore? Even this little GameJam thing already had half of its miniscule audience scratching their heads why they can't simply throw a stone across there, and instead have to line up at the correct block. There was a puzzle planned down the road where a magic crystal freezes the water blocks around it and you can push it only forward. With free movement in any direction that wouldn't even be a puzzle anymore!
But is occasional stuff like this really worth offsetting half of the potential audience? Or should I drop that concept right now and go for Ultima Underworld instead? I'm curious what you think.
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