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 Three Primary Skill Trees

Okay.  Because you can adopt virtually any shape in the game (become any creature) the first skill tree the protagonist possesses is that of Form.

Form are the skills associated with the creature-shape the protagonist has possessed.  So this changes every time the protagonist swaps bodies.

Form does not only bestow a particular set of skills on the protagonist - in some cases in may also restrict the use of other skills.  i.e. Whilst possessing the body of a rat, the protagonist cannot wear armour or wield weapons.  Stands to reason.

Also, certain shapes carry with them innate skills like 'underwater breathing' for fish, for example.

The second skill tree is Soul.  These are the skills inherently belonging to the protagonist. They include pretty much everything you learn how to do through the course of the game. Weapon skills, spells, sneaking and disarming traps for example.  But as mentioned previously these can be often restricted by Form.

The third skill tree is Spirit.  These are the skills associated with your spectral form - i.e. when you're a ghost.  These hinge upon your ability to interact with physics objects whilst in spirit form, and generally spook other denizens of the Under.  It also governs your ability to possess other shapes.

In true RPG fashion - all of these skill trees are capable of being developed.  So the longer you play, the better you will be in Form, Soul and Spirit skills.  Making you more competent in various shapes, better in your learned skills, and more vengeful as a ghost - and more capable to acquire bigger and better shapes (better possession ability).

In this way we want to actively encourage, and hope to achieve, procedurally generated zones in the game which are too difficult to best the first few times you visit them, until you have unlocked / worked out what combination of skills and shape to employ.

Underland intends to be a 2D platform / puzzle RPG.  A game where you can be anything, acquire any skill, and explore a nightmarish landscape derived from the real world.

We think its going to be loads of fun.