I know that the explanation of the game might be quite vague at the moment. That is partly because I am undecided on a lot of things, but also because I don’t want to commit to any feature that I am unable to actually build. I might put together a game design document on this site at some point, which will explain it all in a lot more detail. Until then, screenshots might be the best way to understand what I am making.
Introduction
At its core, Project Hilda is a survival RPG game with a 2.5D retro-inspired art style. The game will focus on emergent narrative and systemic gameplay and will take place in a fully procedurally generated and simulated world. You will play not as a hero, but as a random. Just one more soul struggling to survive in a world that doesn't revolve around you.
The games I am taking inspiration from are Project Zomboid, Kenshi, RimWorld and, of course, Dwarf Fortress. So, a pretty small scope, right?
Art Style
I am not an artist, so I am going to have to get some help when it comes to art. But the game will be 2.5D and will almost definitely be pixel art. These two points are jointly creative and pragmatic decisions. Below is my current art reference board, which hopefully will give you some idea of what I am thinking.
Current Design Pillars
Emergent Narrative Above All - Everything in the game should be focused on creating meaning in a procedurally generated world.
Systemic Gameplay Everywhere - Every system in the game should be able to interact with other systems to create emergent narrative and a highly re-playable game.
No Special Treatment for the Player - I don’t want the player to feel like they are the center of the world. The characters they meet should matter just as much as the player. Therefore, the player will not be given any artificial advantage.
But why?
I first had the idea when I was watching an episode of Community. In the episode Digital Estate Planning, almost the entire plot takes place in a video game.
Back then I didn’t know the first thing about programming or how to make a game. I knew I wasn’t naturally gifted at programming, as the previous year I got graded an ‘E’ in my computer science GCSE. But after watching this episode, it didn’t take long for me to decide that I was going to be a game developer.
That was almost a decade ago now; since then, I’ve been to college as well as university for game development. I’ve been doing Unity development as my day job for over three years, and I know I finally have the skill set to make this game. Finding the time to work on the project is now the biggest challenge.
I’ve realised that the game from Community didn’t create the concept of emergent gameplay or emergent narrative. There are countless outstanding games in the genre, but I still feel a need to create the idea that started me on my game development journey.
Roadmap & Next Steps
The scope of this thing is massive, I know, but I’m committed to developing this game regardless of the time frame.
Unfortunately, at the moment the amount of time I am able to spend on development is limited due to having a day job and other commitments. It’s my goal to one day be in a position where I can work on this full time but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen anytime soon. In the meantime, I am committed to spending every bit of free time I have developing this game. All that is to say, if you are reading this and hoping to play the game soon, don’t hold you’re breath.
The plan going forward is to work on a vertical slice of the game (a small demo that I get in people to play and see what’s working and what isn’t). As I’ll explain in the next few dev logs, I had been focusing on the procedurally generated aspect of the game but have decided to stop working on that for now. Instead, I am planning on focusing on gameplay in a handmade level. In the finished game, the core of the emergent gameplay will come from interaction with procedurally generated and simulated NPCs, so that is what I should be focused on at the moment.
So, for this vertical slice, I am going to focus on maximising the emergent narrative potential of a single town or village. The grander scale, world-wide simulation stuff can come later, but if the focus of my game is on interacting with individual characters, I need to focus on that first.