Wellcome to what we hope to be the first of many devlogs for “The Familiars”! There's definitely no shortage of work that needs to be done and we would love to share the results with you.
What is The Familiars ?
The first thing you might ask yourself is “what exactly is The Familiars ?” Well, what we can say for certain is that it’s definitely Not an RPG!
If things go to plan, it’s going to be an action-adventure / platformer where you play as Pepper the druid and his familiars Magnus, Ari and Bozo. The main focus will be on storytelling, exploration and platformer elements, with a dash of combat thrown in for good measure.
What have we got so far ?
- Character Development: We've modeled and rigged our main characters, complete with a range of animations to bring them to life.
- World Building: We have complete environments for the Village of Aster and Gladys Forest, and we're close to finishing the Garden of Life, our starting location— or at least we think we are, as this wouldn’t be the first time we change our minds.
- Game Mechanics:
- Fully functional character controller, allowing players to switch between the four characters, each with unique skills, attributes, and behaviors.
- Flying mechanic
- Sliding mechanic
- Fully functional combat system.
- Fully functional quests system
- Fully functional mobs and npc’s system
- Testing Grounds: An expansive playground scene serves as our testing lab, where we've developed over 20 types of platformer challenges that players will face in their adventures.
What are our short term goals ?
- Community Building: We're focusing on establishing a strong community through social media and Discord. Your feedback is invaluable, and we're committed to integrating your constructive insights into our development process.
- Gameplay Trailer: Our next big milestone is to produce a captivating gameplay trailer. This involves finalizing critical character animations, perfecting the flight controller, populating the world with NPCs, and showcasing the unique mechanics of each character. We'll also highlight our platforming challenges and combat encounters to give you a taste of what's to come.
- Funding: Securing the necessary funds will be crucial for continuing our journey. Ideally we’ll be able to do that through crowdfunding.
What are our medium to long term goals ?
- Expanding Our Team: We know our limitations better than anyone else, so we’re looking to hire people more talented than us to help enhance the quality and scope of our game.
- Playable demo ASAP: Launching a playable demo within the next six months is a priority, giving you a firsthand look at "The Familiars."
- Content Creation: Our vision includes 8 major regions teeming with quests and adventures, at least 12 unique creature archetypes (with multiple variations), 8 unique bosses, and a minimum of 16 hours of gameplay.
- Launch: All we can say is that we’ll do our best to release the game in 2 years and that we’re pretty confident we can pull this off