We’re in the thick of it now. With the core of our design complete, we’ve begun to turn our focus towards major production of our game. When last we spoke, dear readers, the team was hopeful that by this week we’d develop the in-game scenarios that would form the backbone of our forest-in-crisis story. Indeed, we’ve identified and outlined the major story beats that our fox protagonist will go through as it wrangles the animals together to build the dam of dams:
- The Fox will encounter a bear during the daytime. The bear will be hungry and uncooperative until you help it satisfy its cravings. As a nocturnal animal, the fox will be uncomfortable with the bright sunlight and chipper chirping of diurnal birds and will have to find a way to navigate under these conditions, which will also affect your social interaction with the bear.
- A wild boar gets too wild and finds itself injured, also during the daytime. The boar requires a healing poultice (you have to love video games for letting you use the word “poultice” unironically) which requires multiple ingredients to be gathered. Again, sensory overload will be an issue.
- At nighttime, the fox encounters a stag and doe whose fawn has gone missing. The fox agrees to help, and finds the young fawn mesmerized by some fireflies and unwilling to think about anything else. As an evening scenario, the fox will be able to think and communicate more clearly and focus on choosing the most helpful dialogue to resolve the situation.
As a stretch goal, we’d like to include a 4th scenario involving a non-verbal moose. We’re not entirely sure yet what else that will involved, but a stoic, silent moose sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it?
By our halves presentation in a few weeks, at least one of these scenarios should be fully implemented in the game with dialogue (or symbols, as may be the case for the daytime scenarios), as we show off the progress we’ve made to the ETC community.