I spent some time thinking about what direction I’m going in terms of gameplay for Eyes and Shadows.

At first (months ago) I treated it simply as a toy, to test the graphics and a creature trying to catch you in the dark woods. I’m happy with the simplistic art style, so it will stay like that: lowres, pixelated, hand-drawn, for the most part. I’m also happy with the base mechanic so far. So it’s time to expand on this.

I’ve been exchanging game ideas with a friend of mine, an old gamer just like me (we started on the famicom ;), and we enjoy a lot in common, so I often take his opinion in consideration in my own work.

That plus the inspiration I get from Neo Scavenger led me to the following:

• I want a survival game, in FPS view, with simple RPG elements, and simple loot/inventory system

• in two different environments, forests and underground tunnels. Why? Because they’re good old settings for scary situations

• I want procedural environments. Each time you go in the forest, it’s a different one. Same for the tunnels.

• I want night and day cycle

• you will have a lair, from which
  — the game is saved
  — you can go to the forest or the tunnels
  — you can do other actions like resting, managing your inventory, and preparing for your next expedition in general

• since this is a free indie game, the scope must remain reasonably small if I intend to finish it someday, so all these features must stay quite simple, but give a challenge to the player still. My development philosophy: give the most fun possible with as few features as possible, therefore as little work as possible.

I have more specific ideas, but these are the core of the gameplay I guess.

So for version 0.3, the next logical steps are:

• adding the base character stats: thirst and hunger

• adding ways to satisfy them, ie adding food and water

• adding disabilities as consequences of bad survival capabilities from the player: weakness state (slower movement) and death from starvation

• make the creature more forgiving, since there will be tasks other than just running away from it

• no lair, game saving, day/night cycles in this version

• change the objective to: find a potential lair. When you enter it, you win the game for now

I hope to have version 0.3 available in less than a month, so stay tuned guys :)