"Are you guys seeing this? It's almost as if though...they're alive..."
That's right! Design has been alive and well! I'll admit, I've been wanting to get this dev log out a bit earlier...but better late than never!
I've been absolutely astounded by the amount of progress that our team has made within the last months. Within the last two months, the Desaturation Point team decided to split into four distinct feature teams: Monster, Narrative, Items, and Information.
This has permitted us to discover blockades, and to really allow each member to ✨flourish✨in their topic of expertise.
Enough about boring backstage production whispers and utterances. Why don't we listen in to the comms and see how the teams have been?
💀REPORT LOG - MONSTER💀
The Monster AI has had a ground up redesign. It will actively hunt the player through aggressive and systematic means, utilizing both sense and intelligence to catch our players off guard. In essence, we've got different monster types that have a "grab bag" of features that it can use to track players down.
Slug - Might not be the smartest...but just needs to be smarter than you.
This redesign will allow the monster to feel both unpredictable and unrelenting in it's pursuit. And thus with these new behaviors the team has christened one of the new monster types as the "Apex" monster. We look forward to seeing you try to survive our biggest threat yet.
Apex Monster - 🎶One way, or another🎶
We are so excited to show you these horror's in action, but until then we can only showcase the models that our art team has been so passionately working on.
~ Spencer
📚REPORT LOG - NARRATIVE📚
Cade here, lead of the Narrative Team!
On the narrative side of things, the script for our upcoming early access build is now complete! A primarily goal in writing this was creating a story where the past relationships, personalities, and motivations of each character shape the way they move through the base. This means that this was written with a changing story in mind, as any character can die at any point, vastly altering the dialogue and experience.
Fancy Script~
For instance, in the section of the base where the early access build takes place, the youngest member, Gagnon, believes she’ll be able to find her mentor. We wanted to make the characters feel real by having motivative factors behind the goals they need to accomplish in game.
If Gagnon is dead, however, the other characters have nowhere near the level of connection that Gagnon had with her mentor, so they have different reasons that move them through this area in the research base.
So basically...the more people that are alive, the more of my stuff you'll be able to read! Sooooo stay alive out there!
~ Cade
REPORT LOG - 🔧ITEMS🔧
Hey y’all, my name is Oliver Gallina.
One of my main responsibilities on this project has been working with the Tools & Items Team, a core feature team that focuses on making our game’s usable Tools and Items as enjoyable and strategic as possible.
"Now THAT'S an enjoyable and strategic flashlight!" - Zeggy
Each playable character in the game carries a unique Tool with them: there’s a Flashlight that lights up the darkness, a Fire Extinguisher that can put out fires or serve as a smokescreen to hide from monsters, and a Scanner which allows you to catch a glimpse of nearby darkened rooms. These form the player’s core toolkit for ascertaining and avoiding threats, and carefully navigating the game’s arctic labyrinths.
Flashlight Mechanics in Action
We’re working hard to test and tune these Tools, while also balancing a host of consumable Items like Medkits, Batteries, and Keycards, which we will keep you updated about in the future.
~ Oliver
REPORT LOG - 🔧INFORMATION🔧
In the previous sprints the Information team came together to update and rethink all of our UI methods and elements. We are working with our artists, engineers and the audio team to ensure that everything the player needs to make strategic choices is clearly communicated.
A glimpse into our new overlay art!
We are also taking care to be intentional with anything that isn’t communicated directly. Nothing should be left ambiguous accidentally.
With that, we have also decided to communicate as much diegetically as possible. Anything that can’t be done diegetically is being tweaked to be as flavorful as possible.
"It's like I can actually tell what's going on!" - Zeggy
Needless to say, we have our plates full and we are ravenously working away.
~ Julian
And this is only a mere sneak peek into all that we have to offer in the future!
And hey, if all of this stuff looks cool...the small bird on my shoulder told me to wait until tomorrow, but I can't wait any longer:
WE'RE GONNA BE AVAILABLE ON STEAM!!!
So yeah! Be a part of the playtest community, and join us in our ventures into the unknown, icy, cold, dark, depressin-
...you get the point. Play the game. Join our server. And until our next dev update, don't die~!
~ Zeggy