I’ve had the idea for an adventure game for the past couple of years, which I think a lot of people might enjoy. Unfortunately I haven’t found one yet, so I’ve decided that I’ll develop it myself. And it will be called: The Pilgrimage.
A few years ago, I first read the first two Hyperion novels (Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion) and I enjoyed them a lot (particularly the first one). Although they are science fiction, the main structure of the first novel is inspired by The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. In both, there is a framing device of a pilgrimage and eacho of the pilgrims tells their story. I had thought about the idea of a game where instead of playing a single character, you would play each of these characters as they’re telling their stories and play as them in a flashback with an unreliable narrator, similar to Call of Juarez: Gunslinger. Some of the characters may have met each other before, some without knowing it. Some may have experience the same event but from different experiences. Each night, one character will tell their tale around the campfire. Player choices would influence what happens in other tales as well as the frame story, allowing replayability. The story will then conclude when they have reached their destination.
Though the details aren’t settled yet, I have a clear idea of the main vision:
To incorporate all of these character’s stories into the game, there is an overarching loop for the game, where each day is one iteration:
Step 3 is inspired by The Banner Saga when the clan would move from location to location. I want to incorporate this into the game as it provides a nice sense of progression and a bit of respite for the player. I think it will also make the journey feel more like a whole, rather than a series of minigames.
To get this game done will involve a lot of work, so I will need a solid plan.
Obviously this is a large undertaking, especially for a solo dev. In terms of programming, I don’t think I will run into too much trouble as most of the mechanics are straightforward and in terms of the look and feel of the game, the most complicated part will be getting the lighting right, and Unity takes care of it for the most part.
I actually tried working on The Pilgrimage back in February in Godot though I got as far as a basic dialogue system and a couple of characters on the screen before I decided to work on other things. The idea was to have a self-contained story for one of the characters (a Paladin), to have something that’s playable as a demo. It would also introduce the overarching Canterbury Tables/Hyperion framing device by having the paladin talk to the other characters around the campfire.
I think the main reason why I moved on to other things was because the scale of the demo was too large to tackle. Up until this point, the largest project I’ve done in terms of scope and time spent was a platformer with a few levels. Not only would I be writing the game code, but I would also be working on sprites, animations and sound. This would all be without having much of an idea of what the final product would look like, or if it would it be worth the effort.
This time around I have a new plan: create a prototype that has most of the character-level gameplay with art and sound just to test the code parts of the game e.g. animations, triggering sound, lighting. That way, I’ll have a playable prototype to find. While the framing device will probably be the main selling point of the game, players will be spend most of their time playing the individual stories of the characters, so that has to be as enjoyable as possible. At the moment, I expect to complete this prototype in about three months, certainly by December.
After I’ve gotten the prototype to the point that is enjoyable and have a few people playtest it and enjoy it, I can then proceed with creating the demo I originally had planned which will take place over a day of the pilgrimage from sunrise to sunset. I think I will stick with the paladin’s story for now as I think it is interesting enough in its own and involves all of the mechanics. Most of the programming should be done in the demo. I will need to add the travelling and camping parts, figure out how player choices will be saved for other parts of the game and tie ii all together. The bulk of the work, however, will be on everything else:
This will take up most of the time working on the problem, especially since I’ll happily say I’m mediocre in each of those areas compared to programming so I will be learning a lot on the job. I expect this phase of the project to take six to nine months but I won’t be surprised if I have to revise this estimate.
Finally, once I have the demo done that people can play, I can then spend the rest of the time working on all the other stories and having player choice influence the main story. I expect this to take up to three years, as I plan to have around seven to eight separate stories, though I may end up being more efficient in producing content due to the processes learnt it working on the demo.
Since last week, I’ve been working on the adventure game prototype. The main premise is that the player is imprisoned in a dungeon and has to escape without being caught. This involves interacting with objects (e.g. keys, doors); talking to prisoners or guards and sneaking around so it feels like the perfect example for a small proof of concept to cover the main character gameplay. As you can see from the video, I have the dialogue system in place using Yarn Spinner as well as Unity 2D lights and hand-drawn normal maps for the stones in the wall. The player can also pick up items (in this case keys) and use them to unlock doors.
My plan for the next couple of weeks, I want to get a few things done with the prototype:
After that I will be looking into pathfinding (so guards can go through doors) and a basic stealth system.
At the moment I plan to write these devlogs at about once a month, though I’ll probably write the next one when the items above are finished, detailing anything interesting I found when it comes to development.