Daunting Door
For the last six months, I’ve been ‘just about to start the city’ environment in Lone Survivor. Instead I’ve been honing the first three worlds to a finished standard, gradually adding, changing and even dropping mechanics. The game has got a lot wider, but very little longer.
The IGF version I put together, as with all the others since before my Indiecade entry, ended with You stepping out of the Wing Court Apartments onto the street for the first time. That door has always led nowhere, and that fact has become increasingly daunting.
Well I’ve finally broken that barrier, and I’m working hard on the new area. It took a long time to work out the scope, and eventually the map I was going to use. It’s still likely to change as I have a time-budget now I can’t really afford to run over, so cuts will be made if need be to simply get this game out the door! There’s plenty of stuff to do in LS already, so I’m not going to pad the content out if it doesn’t need it either.
So in the city I plan on having a couple more sidequests like the coffee ones. Even though these are not crucial to beating the game, and add time to development, the flavour they add I think is essential to the game’s subtext. My inspiration is definitely Deadly Premonition in this respect, a game I loved very dearly. In fact the more this project rolls on, the more I realise I’ve subconsciously been influenced by its mechanics – not just the coffee!
Outside Superflat World