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[Mewens]

Afloat Games is proud to showcase the early (and, boy, do we mean early) work on its first game: "Afloat: Restless Spirits"!

We'll be updating our blog -- afloatgames.blogspot.com -- with developments, setting details and art. (Be patient -- there's only two of us. Updates, particularly of art assets, will come slowly!)

SETTING

Afloat takes place in a world with a hundred hundred names -- humanity has spread and splintered into myriad cultures, each with its own language and ideas. However, there is one uniting thread -- an otherworldly race called the Alkyones. After years of living side-by-side with humans, the Alkyones' monolithic language has become lingua franca for all manner of scholarly and philosophical pursuits.

The Alkyone name for this world is known far and wide -- Empsukhros.

In the dark ages, humanity, Alkyones and spirits -- creatures born from Empsukhros' fertile wild places -- waged bitter wars, but brave heroes and stalwart leaders forged a new peace a century ago. Now, trade and exploration are more important than conquest and warfare. In this brave age of discovery, a youthful man, Daniyel, wanders wherever he pleases.

Spoiler

The game occurs in Enyoris Peninsula, a fast-growing former backwater of the small kingdom Hebron. It has two primary quest hubs (the trade city Joppa and the trading outpost Kiriath) and five dungeon locations (Anemoi, the Wind Tower; Nya'oh Forest; Gamla ruins; Kassiopi shallows; and Ourania.) The first four dungeons have factions that offer sidequests. The player can focus on one faction, or can do jobs for any or all of them; how a player finishes these quests, and who the player finishes them for, influence the game's ending.

STORY

Daniyel has returned to a lonely corner of his homeland, Hebron, after years abroad. Things have changed: The once-busy trading center of Joppa has become still and empty; its entopiodaimones -- rare spirits who live among humans, rather than prey upon them -- have become restless and angry. In the trading village of Kiriath, an Alkyone named Cressida recognizes Daniyel, and begs him for help. She and a strange, hooded Hebronese man named Shimshon sought access to Joppa's ports, but were turned back. Daniyel, sensing that the pair's plight is part of some greater need, agrees to help them.

Of course, Daniyel, Cressida and Shimshon aren't quite what they seem. And, as Daniyel suspects, something greater than himself, his new compatriots or even the land's ancient spirits has sent disruptions across this corner of the world. As the mysteries of the Enyoris Peninsula are unraveled, the secrets of our protagonists will be lain bare -- and what seemed a network of coincidence will be revealed as the confluence of fate.

Spoiler

The merchant guild Ah'shirre was quick to establish a trading outpost near the Hadespyli -- a gate to Ourania, the Alkyone world -- after dark age hostilities ended. It's made a good living trading worldly goods for rare and valuable items from Ourania, enabling it to establish and build up the city of Joppa. But then, three years ago, the gate closed. Ah'shirre strove to hide the closure -- its power, income and clout rely on a close connection to Ourania. It burned through its coffers to keep up appearances while it investigated the gate; as its finances tightened, it began levying harsher fines and taxes on its residents and visiting traders. As Ah'shirre's draconian policies escalated and its deep pockets emptied, trade naturally died off -- now, the flow of merchants and goods through the peninsula has slowed to a trickle.

Daniyel is a born adventurer -- or, rather, a reborn adventurer. He was one of the architects of the truces that ended the hostilities of the dark ages. A century ago, he was a powerful mage and impressed Typhoeus, the king of the Alkyones, with his cleverness and bravery. When Daniyel gave up his magical powers to imbue human-Alkyone truces with sorcerous might, Typhoeus gave him something in return -- eternal youth. Over the years, Daniyel has developed a keen sense for trouble and a cavalier attitude toward danger. He's interested in adventure for its own sake; the Alkyones who know him call him Aphobeo -- the fearless -- and say that he's outgrown his humanity.

Cressida was an Orion, one of several elite warriors that answer directly to Typhoeus. For several years, it worked to ensure humans and Alkyones wouldn't mate, something Typhoeus had outlawed. Three years ago -- just before the Hadespyli closed -- its soulmate was killed by a mysterious attacking force in Ourania. The pain of that loss put its actions as an Orion into sharp focus; now, it wanders Empsukhros, seeking to make amends for breaking up relationships. It needs to cross the ocean to seek forgiveness from a young woman; five years ago, Cressida kidnapped her Alkyone lover, but the woman believed she'd been jilted. When Cressida saw Daniyel -- he's famous among Alkyones -- it believed it had found someone who could help solve its problems.
(A note on gender: Alkyones are unusual creatures. In Ourania they don't have a gender -- typically -- but in Empsukhros, they take on a humanoid form, usually including a sex. The Alkyones don't think of themselves as men or women -- typically -- and are technically genderless. In languages without neuter pronouns, it's common to refer to an Alkyone as a "he" or "she." Cressida has a woman's body on Empsukhros, and is commonly called a "she." For more details, see afloatgames.blogspot.com/2012/05/alkyones.html.)

Shimshon is a quiet man who's intent on crossing the narrow strait to the Hadespyli. He won't say why, and won't talk about himself otherwise. His comments are short, direct and sometimes wry, or fraught with gallows humor. Among the party, Shimshon's secrets are the deepest, and most intrinsically tied to the mystery of Enyoris Peninsula -- five years ago, he was a monk who served the Storm Spirit. A master martial artist and ascetic, he was undone when a beautiful Alkyone visited Anemoi to pay her respects to the Storm Spirit. Aflame with desire, he pursued and wooed her. Eventually, she relented -- but Cressida kidnapped her soon after. Enraged, Shimshon charged the Hadespyli, battering aside its defenders and entering Ourania. There, the warping, reality-denying energies of the world twisted his body and expelled his spirit. The monk's intense mental and spiritual training allowed him to forge a new body in Empsukhros, a feat that took him several years. He's now more spirit than man, and his memory is spotty. He doesn't remember things in a conventional sense; instead, he has longings or urges, and sometimes understands things to be true. He's drawn to Cressida, but doesn't know why; he's also drawn to the Hadespyli, and understands that an important battle awaits him there. Shimshon's body still rages in Ourania, twisted and mutated by the place's energies. The Alkyones have been unable to subdue it; in their sensible, direct way, they simply to closed the Hadespyli and abandon that region of Ourania.

SAMPLE SCREENSHOTS

The site of a well that tapped into trouble:

Spoiler

 Dig site thumb.jpg   103.61KB   33 downloads

The trade village of Kiriath:

Spoiler

 trade village thumb.jpg   314.55KB   62 downloads

The top of Anemoi, the Storm Spirit's tower:

Spoiler

 anemoi top.jpg   92.82KB   35 downloads

FEATURES
Simplified RPG structure. We want the play experience of "Afloat: Restless Spirits" to be as seamless as possible. Gameplay and story, not menus and text boxes, will be the game's core. We're featuring an intelligent auto-save function, so players will never have to worry about recording their games. We've nixed most menus, making the interface direct and simple. We've removed random encounters -- we want every battle to be a meaningful part of the game, something that requires clever execution and forethought. We've made switching out abilities easy, intuitive and free -- we want players to fight battles because they want to, not because they need some arbitrary amount of experience or gold to unlock a new skill or piece of gear. After all, if you wanted to run a treadmill, you'd go to the gym -- not load up an RPG.

Simple commands, complex battles. Using the familiar, easy-to-understand RPG battle interface, we've created an engine that rewards players for experimenting and seeking out powerful synergies. We want players to find strategies and combinations that make their party more than the sum of its parts -- after all, where's the fun or depth in just mashing "attack" to clear meaningless fights? Our mix-and-match suite of abilities means that there's no one way to finish battles -- the same ability that provides the groundwork for Shimshon's powerful, but narrow, suite of attack options can be used to minimize damage as Cressida pounds away with her more reliable spells. Find what works for you and ride it to victory!

A living world. The Enyoris Peninsula may be small and out of the way, but it's no dead plot of land. As Daniyel and his companions solve mysteries and help people, they'll run into dozens of characters and factions, each with a different agenda. The player can seek a balanced peace between the land's power brokers -- or can pick a side and seek conquest. Either way, you control the peninsula's destiny. If that's not your cup of tea, then hire some merchants and begin building a trade empire -- or stay local and build up an inn of your own.

SCOPE
Because it's our first game, we're not looking to shoot the moon with "Restless Souls." We are looking to produce an easy-to-play, easy-to-use title. We're aiming for a 5-10 hour gameplay experience, including sidequests and cutscenes. We're aiming for an intuitive battle system that provides enough strategic depth to be entertaining, but not overwhelming. And finally -- but most imporantly -- we want people to play our game and enjoy themselves.

Edited by Mewens, 10 June 2012 - 07:36 PM.

[Mewens]

Hi guys -- we've got a pair of new logos, but I was hoping to get some input on 'em. (These are in addition to the unpolished version on our blog.)

I was hoping to get your guys' input on 'em -- care to take a look?

 Afloat logo.jpg   823.26KB   9 downloads

[Mewens]

We're working on our eventing and map refinement for the Fire Temple -- Anemoi's mostly done. (Details at our blog -- we're designing our puzzle rooms last, because they'll need to be almost completely envisioned before we begin mapping. I mean, redesigning maps is fun and all, but it takes a lot of time!)

Here's a screen shot of our design template:

Spoiler

 fire temple sample.jpg   118.7KB   14 downloads

We're using that background, those tiles (and the dark lava tile), and those shadow patterns on most of the maps. The red tint is also a featured throughout the dungeon.

Scenario for the Fire Temple: As droughts have increased around the ruins of old Gamla, its people have been forced to drill wells further and futher down the coast. One of the latest -- at a promising site near one of Gamla's old watchtowers -- breached an open cavern about 60 feet down. Work was stopped when hundreds of fire beetles -- regional pests -- poured from the hole, destroying the drilling equipment; the pestilence has decimated nearby crops and shows no signs of stopping.

Our heroes become involved when a local monk asks them to recover some soil samples from the beetles' nest. His studies suggest the creatures are connected to the drought, but he doesn't have enough data to confirm his guess. Of course, nothing's ever as simple as it could be, and the heroes discover there's something truly unusual beneath the dry fields of Gamla.