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The Isle of Bobbin
ABOUT
Survive and chill in this cute, organic, fabric adventure game.
Madeline's husband went to the 'Isle of Bobbin' on an adventure but never returned; leaving her life behind her, and she sets off to find him.
Features:
This game contains no meat products, no money, no violence, no religious iconography! Just fun.
This adventure specifically started over 1 year ago, but have to say that it really started since childhood, and what we believe makes our game so unique.
Ok, so let's start with the basic premise of the game. You play as Madeline, a bunny who is married to a famous journalist and adventurer. One day she sets off on an assignment to a mysterious island called the 'Isle of Bobbin' to report back on its inhabitants and history.
Madeline waits for 4 seasons, but he never returns; not being the type of bunny to wait until it's too late; Madeline leaves their home behind and sets off to the Isle herself in search of her husband.
So, pretty simple stuff really. But what makes this game different from most other survival, stuck on an island game... for me it's about the meaning behind the game and the way the game feels.
What we're trying to do with this game is create a need to explore but also relax at the same time, survival and relaxation are seldom in the same sentence, and it's getting this balance right that we feel makes the difference. More about that to follow, but we wanted to quickly go over the art style.
As you can see from the screenshots, it's like fabric sewn together with a colourful bonanza. We only began to take drawing at all seriously in the last year, and we tried many different styles to get to this point.
So what can you do in this game?
First of all, we wanted the player to be able to forage for food and then cook it. So we began to plan out many ideas for recipes for things like Apple Pies, Vegetable Salads or Mushroom Soup. Then we could reverse engineer these to know what types of vegetables or fruit the player would find. We took all these recipes and programmed a way of having a cooker which would use a plugin to create a crafting/cooking system. It's easy stuff but hard work to research all these recipes and create the hundreds of in-game items.
Now we had a way of replenishing health how would the player lose it?
This was going to be a big part of the game. We wanted the player while exploring, would gradually lose health when either interacting with the environment or moving across maps.
So again... how do you do this and not make the game a time-pressured panic attack? We still want the player to relax... and we wanted to promote a sense of freedom and choice within the game. One way we've got around this is to not use an in-game timer which is counting the seconds the player is playing and decrease the health but to have the player loose health only when moving from one map to the other - this way we could easily balance the amount you lose vs the amount of time the player moves from one map to the next. Also, this gives the player control over deciding to move from one map to the next... for instance we wanted the player to be able to think "should I move on, or is it time to sleep or eat another meal?"
In terms of game design, this gives a player choice and promotes freedom but within the boundaries that the developer can set.
This tied in nicely with the time system - this system also is linked to map movements, move to a map it's plus one to the in-game clock... stay on a map, time standstill. We know this might sound awkward at first, but we didn't want to have the player feel like time is slipping away. This is bad enough in real life, let alone when you're trying to play a game! (And let more time slip away).
So that covers off a few of the mechanics of the Isle of Bobbin; there are many more things we could cover here however please keep reading/watching for more on the development of this game.
Take a look at the screenshots and our trailer below. I'd love to know what you think!
Feel free to follow the progress on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter etc.
Madeline's husband went to the 'Isle of Bobbin' on an adventure but never returned; leaving her life behind her, and she sets off to find him.
Features:
- Cute fabric style artwork
- Explore the beautiful Isle of Bobbin
- Survive by collecting and crafting hundreds of recipes and items
- Decorate your home in many styles, and with the furniture, you build in the workshop
- Grow fresh organic food in your garden or forage for wild food in the woods
- Meet the fantastic cast of eccentric islanders, help them with their quirky daily lives
- Go out on the town and see a show at the theatre, work a shift in the cafe or teach a lesson in the school, who knows what will happen!
- Celebrate the seasons as they change from Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter
This game contains no meat products, no money, no violence, no religious iconography! Just fun.
This adventure specifically started over 1 year ago, but have to say that it really started since childhood, and what we believe makes our game so unique.
Ok, so let's start with the basic premise of the game. You play as Madeline, a bunny who is married to a famous journalist and adventurer. One day she sets off on an assignment to a mysterious island called the 'Isle of Bobbin' to report back on its inhabitants and history.
Madeline waits for 4 seasons, but he never returns; not being the type of bunny to wait until it's too late; Madeline leaves their home behind and sets off to the Isle herself in search of her husband.
So, pretty simple stuff really. But what makes this game different from most other survival, stuck on an island game... for me it's about the meaning behind the game and the way the game feels.
What we're trying to do with this game is create a need to explore but also relax at the same time, survival and relaxation are seldom in the same sentence, and it's getting this balance right that we feel makes the difference. More about that to follow, but we wanted to quickly go over the art style.
As you can see from the screenshots, it's like fabric sewn together with a colourful bonanza. We only began to take drawing at all seriously in the last year, and we tried many different styles to get to this point.
So what can you do in this game?
First of all, we wanted the player to be able to forage for food and then cook it. So we began to plan out many ideas for recipes for things like Apple Pies, Vegetable Salads or Mushroom Soup. Then we could reverse engineer these to know what types of vegetables or fruit the player would find. We took all these recipes and programmed a way of having a cooker which would use a plugin to create a crafting/cooking system. It's easy stuff but hard work to research all these recipes and create the hundreds of in-game items.
Now we had a way of replenishing health how would the player lose it?
This was going to be a big part of the game. We wanted the player while exploring, would gradually lose health when either interacting with the environment or moving across maps.
So again... how do you do this and not make the game a time-pressured panic attack? We still want the player to relax... and we wanted to promote a sense of freedom and choice within the game. One way we've got around this is to not use an in-game timer which is counting the seconds the player is playing and decrease the health but to have the player loose health only when moving from one map to the other - this way we could easily balance the amount you lose vs the amount of time the player moves from one map to the next. Also, this gives the player control over deciding to move from one map to the next... for instance we wanted the player to be able to think "should I move on, or is it time to sleep or eat another meal?"
In terms of game design, this gives a player choice and promotes freedom but within the boundaries that the developer can set.
This tied in nicely with the time system - this system also is linked to map movements, move to a map it's plus one to the in-game clock... stay on a map, time standstill. We know this might sound awkward at first, but we didn't want to have the player feel like time is slipping away. This is bad enough in real life, let alone when you're trying to play a game! (And let more time slip away).
So that covers off a few of the mechanics of the Isle of Bobbin; there are many more things we could cover here however please keep reading/watching for more on the development of this game.
Take a look at the screenshots and our trailer below. I'd love to know what you think!
Feel free to follow the progress on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter etc.
IMAGES/SCREENSHOTS/TRAILER
Here is the main character Madeline
Here is a small number of the cast of The Isle of Bobbin
Its Autumn!
And here is Summer/Spring
A cold Winter night on the farm
And even colder days!
Find out the word on the street from the eccentric characters of the Isle of Bobbin
Good luck on the Journey when the time comes...
)
