Here’s my current thinking for the game in terms of gameplay/plot/features etc:
The Matagi are traditional winter hunters of the Tōhoku region of northern Japan, they hunt deer and bear, and live in small villages in mountain beech forests.
The game will be an arial view survival game set in a vast mountainous terrain. The player must carefully travel across the map, whilst managing their stamina, hunger and thirst by hunting/trapping food, stopping to collect water and making camp when necessary.
While the player character was out hunting in the wild (playing the tutorial), raiders attacked the village, burning down buildings and taking a young girl. The player must traverse the map, track down the raiders and rescue the girl.
Two other hunters from the village attempted to go after the raiders (they left before you got back) you might find/help them along the way.
The raiders camp will keep moving. Use your dog to get the scent and take point (an item of the girls clothing can be used to pick up the scent).
Sometimes you won’t be able to pick up the scent – just keep moving north and try somewhere else.
Equipping the Rifle will automatically put the player in ‘stalk’ mode (walks slowly, targeting the nearest prey/hostile).
Give your dog commands to set its behaviour:
Follow – stay close to the player Wait – stay put (will auto-return after a certain distance away) Track – attempt to pick up a scent trail (raiders or prey), then point the way Offensive - run ahead, attack/bark at predators
Sleeping can only be done at safe campsites (represented by a fire pit), keep a good stock of kindling to ensure you get a good nights sleep. Sleeping will save progress.
As I intend the terrain to be vast, it will have to be (at least partially) procedurally generated. It will be quite basic - rocky ridges will block vertical movement (causing you to go around). Trees and small lakes will be dotted around. There will be areas where small prey (rabbits and foxes) will appear (traps should be laid here – shooting them will be difficult/inefficient use of ammo).
Deer and bears will roam the terrain individually and be reasonably rare. To hunt these animals the player will need to use a combination of stalking and cornering (patience and strategy will be required).
Upon death the game will reload after the last sleep (hinting at recurring dreams of death in the wild).
Some of the fundementals are now done (player movement, collisions) and the basics of the map generation system are in place.
I’ve started work on some of the sprites, but there is still a lot to do in that area.
My next focus will be on the core gameplay elements, tracking/stalking/killing animals, laying traps, etc. As well as working out how the stamina/food/water meters will work.
Looking great. The vibe is exactly how I imagined it from your screenshots. Great work. If you need a hand with sounds, let me know.
One very minor thing, is that I would only draw the foot print dots if they fall outside of a shadow. I think this would look a lot cleaner than drawing the dark patch that appears when they combine with a shadow. But this is really nit picking. %)
Thanks for pointing me to these links. All really interesting stuff. I was somewhat aware of the exsistence of the movie, but didn’t want to draw on this too heavily.
The fairy tale stuff is interesting, and I’ve read similar things elsewhere.
Not really sure how much narrative I’ll be able to convey in the game, but hopefully I’ll be able to get a flavour of these stories/legends across.
Beautiful motion/atmosphere! Do you have someone to produce the music for the game? I’d be glad to make the music/sound effects for your game!
I’m a music producer from Argentina… you can listen to some of my work on http://www.thekyotoconnection.com, although is by no means the sound/style I would develop for your game… Just drop me an e-mail if you need my collaboration!
It’s been a while since I posted anything, so I thought I’d do a bit of a progress report.
In general, progress has been slow and not particularly steady. Most of the hunting/shooting functionality is done, though I’m not sure it’s that much fun at the moment.
Collecting firewood and making camp is working - camping moves the game clock on 6 hours and there is a simple day/night cycle to reflect this.
I’ve also been working on character sprites. I should soon have a complete set - although they are very much ‘first draft’, they are functional.
@Alternaria Sorry, I didn’t get back to you sooner. Your music is great, but I’ll probably just see what I can come myself up with for audio. Music is likely to be extremely minimal (accenting events).
I was thinking - and forgive me for not knowing much about how Matagi work - that it would be quite cool to have a part of the game where you have to control the dog?
Maybe when your energy gets too low, just before you are about to die, you can use the dog to scout for food in one last attempt at survival? But of course the dog will have it’s own energy meter, too… :P
@d_durham I agree putting out a “complete to a point” version for the competition is the best way to go about it. You can always release a finished++ version after the competition ;)
OK, not sure how much time I’ll be able to spend on it between now and the deadline (hopefully some). Anyway, here’s the current state of my game - the ‘first playable’ if you like.
There’s still A LOT I’d like to do with it - some of which I hope to be able to do before Saturday night, but some of it will have to wait until post competition/judging.
@Deconstructeam Once you leave the village everything is quite spaced out. Still working on populating/balancing the map with interesting stuff - but there will still be a certain amount of wandering the vast empty wilderness.
I’ll be very honest. The intro was amazing, and I really thought “this is probably a possible winner”, but after the intro i got totally lost. I probably didn’t understand how to play it. The guy said “go to the north”, and by going to the north nothing happens until the stamina gets to 0. If I go west, I can’t find the campfire. I can’t find animals. I guess the biggest difficulty for me was that specific feeling of being lost (I guess it’s intentional, and it could be very interesting if encouraged in a good way)
I think there’s A LOT of potential, and I really want to understand how to approach it in order to enjoy it!
@SnakeEaterITA Thanks for playing. The biggest task I had left to do was populate the game world with more ‘stuff’ (more npcs, animals, campsites etc) while balancing the feel of isolation. I wasn’t far off the feel i was going for but the game world is pretty huge, so this takes a long time - and I just ran out.
Also, info on how to use the dog is currently missing from the game. The ‘Track’ option will always point you to your target.
A hint (stop reading now if you’d rather not know):
Despite what the old man says, you’ll never make it if you keep moving north. The best strategy (or it should be) is to know where your nearest campsite is and explore the area around it until you find another campsite closer to your target.
I would have liked to put in more villagers to explain some of the stuff.
OK, I feel like I’ve been making excuses for too long now ;)
It’s quite awesome, and I love the cold atmosphere of it, the inventory, doggie and the gun targeting ring. But I keep wandering around in the woods, finding mostly nothing and then dying. I shot a deer once, but died of hunger on the way to retrieve the meat(story of my life). Adding things that might be considered landmarks(a weird tree, a clump of rocks, a frozen lake) could allow you to have this giant map but also have it be a bit more navigable. I will try again with the dog, but he was pointing me oddly when I used him the last time. Thanks for this, great work!
@GlittenMoss Thanks for the feedback, yes some ‘landmarks’ would be a good addition - there are a few signpost stones that point you to useful features. Also the fact that everything is droppable allows for a certain amount of ‘breadcrumbing’ - but you can’t really carry enough stuff to make this viable.
I love the feel of this game, the graphics, sound and everything is just spot on. Congrats! :D
As somebody else mentioned, I agree that the intro set expectations that were not met by the pace of the main game. The main game definitely needs some more guidance. If you compare it with Journey (PS3), that has the same sort of wandering world but split into chunks with a guide mark for where you have to walk to.
Maybe a guide marker on the screen edge showing your rough goal? Maybe having a map that is slowly revealed as you walk the land would help? That begs the question: does the map wrap? If so it should be more obvious. If not, then how big is it?
I’ve also been wondering if splitting the gameplay into levels with achievable goals would make for more enjoyable play than an open world? But that might just be my play preference.
A final small point would be that I’d also love to see some extra animation for the dog when it walks up and down the screen.
@matt Thanks very much for taking the time to play my game and giving me some feedback.
Your comments tally with what other people have said. The core problem with the game in it’s current state largely come down to the fact I ran out of time to fully populate the world with the quantity and variety of interesting stuff I would have liked (e.g more animals to hunt, other human NPCs, interesting landscape features, etc).
While I will definitely look to preserve some of the feeling of a sparse and desolate environment, this is something I intend to tackle post competition.
The game world is very big (I’ll do the math later and tell you exactly how big) and it doesn’t wrap - just goes to open snowfield at the edges, although it’s very unlikely the player would ever reach the edge.
The functionality and animation of the dog is also something I’d like to tackle. Currently, selecting ‘Track’ in the dog menu will crudely point the player to the target. I’d like to extend this animation, having the dog return to the player then sniff around for a bit before clearly indicating the direction.
