Giving people something to do when they're not playing...

Part of the idea of the Companion App, is to enable players to be still be involved in the game even when they're not in front of their PC / console.

Features like, reading in-game texts, crafting and frequenting the Auction House are all things that can be done outside of the main game.  Meaning when players are travelling about in RL - on a bus, or wherever, they can prepare for the next time they're ready and able to play.

I for one, despite being a fan of well-written fantasy, often find the act of reading quest descriptions and other narrative elements of RPGs a bit boring.

The Companion App goes a little way to solve this.  The idea here is to present the players with an option to revisit or read up on narrative outside of the actual game.  And prepare them for future adventuring.

With Underline we want to create a rich and immersive world where clues on how to defeat certain monsters or specific entities can be gleaned from myriad places.  But you don't really want to force the player to read stuff unless they want to.  So we intend to provide alternative options for surfacing this information.

Furthermore we want to build this notion into gameplay.  So what you read in the Companion App, and maybe what you highlight within that text actually become features identifiable on your map or radar. For example, you find an ancient text which describes the weaknesses of some creatures, you learn that Trolls are allergic to a certain type of mushroom.  This mushroom - once mere background decoration subsequently becomes something you can track on your radar (as if you're looking out for it / actively searching for it) and becomes something you can harvest from the environment.

Going forward we'll obviously going to create a whole section on features for the Companion App.  But right now its just about capturing the ideas.

As always let us know what you think.  What features would you make available in a Companion App, or offline?

Content Updates, Platform, Seeds, Auction House - extracts from the Game Design Document

CONTENT UPDATES

The game will be built to utilise a universal content management system (CMS - akin to those used to manage content rich websites) in this way, additional content can easily be added to the game in quick, regular updates.

Appealing to the modding community this CMS will be leveraged and exposed to the community to enable non-staff to produce (ratified) content.

User generated content (UGC) will go through a strict appraisal system to ensure quality, and contributors will be rewarded with unique Achievements, potentially in-game currency and possibly immortalised in the game world.

This achieves several things:

1. UGC is a proven tool to build community
2. Top contributors can be recruited if required
3. This provides a low-cost method of producing additional content

PLATFORM

Dread Pirate Booty will be built in Unity for PC and major consoles.

There will also be a companion mobile app which will allow users to perform simple functions in the game, like crafting, visiting the auction house, and acquiring ‘seeds’.

SEEDS

Seeds are optional starting locations.  They can only be derived from visiting an actual real-world location and placing a marker.

Seeds provide players with the opportunity to start their game from a location other than their actual, real-world locale.

• The ability to create seeds will possibly be an IAP.
• Players may earn tokens in-game to occasionally create a new seed other than by IAP.
• Seeds will be tradeable on the Auction House

In this way, players can create seeds and sell them to other players to enable someone to say, play as if they’re in New York, or Sydney.

Similarly, a player may go on holiday and create a seed at Narita airport in Japan, so when they arrive back home they can log-in and play with Narita as their starting location and experience the catacombs of the Japanese Underland.

AUCTION HOUSE

An Auction House will be available to players possibly via a one-time IAP (providing them with a Trader’s Licence).

The Auction House will allow players to buy and sell items they have found or crafted in-game.

The Background to Underland

The concept for Underland started out as a pirate game.  The reason for this was simple.  A friend of mine wanted to make a game and had purchased an 8-bit pirate-themed graphic pack.

I wanted to make a procedurally generated RPG, so I took the pirate theme and hinged the backstory on that.

For this reason the original working title for this project was: Dread Pirate Booty.

The idea of being 'forever cursed' to hunt for buried treasure is because, aside from sail the seven seas, buried treasure is pretty much the standard pirate trope.  X marks the spot and all that.

So I did a bit of research. 

It turns out that the Dread Pirate Roberts referenced in (the excellent) The Princess Bride, was based on a real pirate - Bartholomew Roberts.  We gave Bart the nickname Booty, because, as the Beastie Boys said: what's another name for pirate treasure? Mmm, I think it's booty!

And obviously booty also means ass, and we all like a bit of ass.  Wait!  What?  Where did that come from?

Anyway, moving on swiftly.

So, the game is intended to be PC / console, with a companion mobile app - we'll come to all this later when I basically copy the Game Design Document onto this blog in chunks.

It's also ultimately going to be co op with perhaps a small amount of PVP in it.  In some situations additional players will be able to play monsters pitted against the main players - which should be fun! And in other cases we may afford players to come across other players if they happen to be journeying around the same real world location.  But we'll go into this later, too.

A pirate backstory informs the design of the game a little.  People expect pirates to possess certain equipment.

So this is what we did:

As a pirate you have the following:

1. A pirate hat
2. An eye-patch
3. A hook (for your off hand)
4. A cutlass
5. A peg-leg
6. A parrot
7. A treasure chest

Each of these can be crafted, enchanted and upgraded in particular ways.  They form the essence of your character, but most can only be used whilst Booty (the protagonist) is in humanoid form.  You can't have eel with a peg-leg!

All of these bestow certain abilities on the protagonist, and there are different versions of each, making the full set of pirate gear extremely versatile in combination.

For example, one type of eye-patch projects light like a lantern, a different version highlights items of interest in the environment, traps and switches and the like.

The last two items are somewhat different.

We decided we wanted to inject the parrot with some personality, so we decided to make it your girlfriend.  Wait!  Cursed to be bound to the shape of a parrot.  Of course her name is Polly.

Pretty Polly has her own upgrade path, and can be pretty (if you excuse the pun) useful in most situations.  Upgrades for Pol consist of the ability to collect small valuable items, draw attention to certain environmental content (levers et al), and even attack certain foes. However, she is also insanely jealous of any other attractive females, and will act with extreme hostility when she comes across them - sometimes drawing Booty into danger. She has a particular hatred for mermaids!

The treasure chest is where Booty stores everything he finds.  It is an arcane item in its own right, and can materialise out of thin air whenever Booty needs it.  Items he collects are automatically stored in the chest.

Okay, so that's the backstory in brief, as I said, more detail on that later.  Going forward we are likely to create alternative starting personas to provide players with a choice of base character.