Games [WIP] Forsaken: Year One - A post-apocalyptic city builder with turn based tactical combat

Forsaken is a post-apocalyptic civilization rebuilder. At the head of a group of survivors, your goal is recreate society as you see fit.

EDIT: After months of work, the game is now in Full 3D. There is still work to be done, but I am very proud and happy to finally show you how the game looks:

Hi everyone!

I am very proud to finally show you Forsaken: Year one, the game I have been working on for more than a year full time now, and thinking about for more than 3, writing down ideas and playing around with it in my head. The game is still far from release.

In Forsaken, you don't build buildings and houses like traditional city builders. You start in an infected village with a group of survivors, and scour the different buildings to find new resources, and you can clean the buildings and convert them to have different functionalities (homes, hospitals, cafeteria, storage depot....).

I also want to put a big emphasis on the survivors. so they will all have specific skills, personality traits and needs that you will have to fulfill if you want them to stay a happy and active member of the community. They will forge relationships, and eventually found new families.

You will be able to send out expeditions beyond the borders of your village, find new recruits and locations to explore, and bring back resources to keep your community healthy and safe.

I want this game to force the player to take tough decisions. So not everyone you come across will be trustworthy, and not everyone can be saved with the meager resources at your disposal. The player will have to decide if he sacrifices those who don't benefit your community, or if he tries to save everyone.

Let me know what you think of the idea, and I would love to hear any comment and criticism you have.


IndieDB page: http://www.indiedb.com/games/forsaken-year-one
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ForsakenYearOne/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ForsakenYearOne

Here are a few screenshots from the current prototype:

 

Hey guys! I made this little gameplay teaser and thought I'd share it with you. I want to have a longer gameplay video to show you soon!

Don't hesitate to share your opinions. I'd love to hear them!

 

Welcome and let me wish you a Happy New Year and all the best wishes! Here’s to an apocalypse free 2017! In this post, I’ll talk about what inspired me to create “Forsaken: Year One” and I will describe a few of the important features that I will be including in the game.


I] Inspirations

A few years ago, I was playing a lot of Left 4 Dead with my brothers. The game is amazing and it’s great to play with friends and kill infected. The only thing that always troubled me was: what do the survivors do after we’ve left them and where are they going? After all, you can only kill so many zombies. You need to rest and rebuild at some point.

At the time, I didn’t really act on that feeling but a few years later (about 4 years ago) after leaving my full time job in a big video game company to become independent, I was reading the Walking Dead, and I started thinking that it would be amazing to be at the head of a group of survivors rebuilding the world after an apocalypse. The game could include mature decisions and adult themes, allow the player to decide who he would allow into his new community and what the community would be about. Basically rebuild the world in his image.


At that point I started researching a lot of apocalypse materials, not necessarily zombie related, both books, movies and comics, and I started writing down a lot of ideas about what the game could be.





Some screenshots of the notes that I took while doing research for Forsaken: Year One


II] Gameplay Elements


In this section section I’ll be describing the main elements of the game. Some are already implemented (although in a basic state) and some not yet. But this should give you an idea of what the game will be about.

2.1) City Builder

First of all, Forsaken is a different kind of city builder. Unlike other city builders, I don’t want to focus on creating buildings, but on cleaning, on looting and on reusing the buildings that have been abandoned. There will be a few things that can be built though but nothing major. (for example fences, farms)

2.2) Unique Survivors


Second, Forsaken will put a big emphasis on survivors. To that end I was inspired by The Sims and RPG games in general, because I want the survivors to be unique, both by having their own characteristics, and by having their own personalities, interactions between each other, and develop their own opinion of you and the people they cohabit with.

Left: 6 Unique survivors with randomly generated appearances. Right: Character sheet showing the selected survivor’s traits, competences, inventory, and needs.




2.3) Tactical Turn-Based Combat

A few months ago, I had implemented a prototype of the real time combat in Forsaken, but I was a bit disappointed at how messy the combat felt, and how difficult it was to control. While playing Divinity: Original Sin I realized how amazing their combat system is and that it would really fit well in Forsaken and what I wanted to do with the game. It would allow fine control over the characters and it would resolve the messy feeling I was having with the combat’s current implementation.

2.4) Survivalism

​

Finally, I want survivalism and survivalist methods to have an influence on the game’s resources. To that effect, I have been reading a lot of websites, posts and books about survivalism (most notably the book: “The Knowledge: How to rebuild civilization in the aftermath of a cataclysm”).



The goal of this research is to create interesting resources to the game, and survivalist methods (for example, how to recycle waste, how to make a hand made weapons, how to get clean drinkable water). Of course, it’s not a documentary and all these methods will be gamified but should still provide some idea how to do it.




Photo of one of the note sheets from the survivalism research



Left:An illustration of an artisanal water filter. (1)




So there you have it, the most important ideas behind Forsaken: Year One, and what I want to have in the game. Please keep in mind that this is still an early prototype, and is subject to change depending on how well they interact together and what fun they add to the overall experience.


Thank you for reading through the entire text, and don’t hesitate the comment and share your thoughts on the game, I love hearing about it, and it will help me make the game better!

Follow us:
Website, Facebook, Twitter, IndieDB


Sources:

(1): https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/f0/66/bd/f066bd34908412f938a1afdab4aacbcc.jpg

 

This shouldn't appeal to me, but it does. I like the artwork, even if it's not usually my cup of tea so to speak.
I'm looking forward to this (will be following the thread ).

 

I'm very glad to hear that! Those are the kind of comments that keep me motivated
I hope to hear from you on the next updates and get your feedback so I can improve the game and my vision for the game!

 

Nice prototype!

 

Thank a lot! There is a lot more coming up

 

In the last few weeks, I have been working on different parts of the game. I believe in iterative implementation rather than doing a whole feature right away. There are 2 reasons for this, first I dont believe it is possible to see if a feature works in the game if I cant play with it fast (even if it is buggy) and I believe it keeps ideas flowing and development fresh to develop iteratively.

So for the last few weeks, I have been working on different prototypes for a few important features in the game.


I] Map Editor

One of the most important thing in Forsaken: Year One will be the map generator. So far I had been working with a small handmade map, where I placed all the buildings by hand, but it is not ideal for a lot of reasons.

I started playing around with a map editor that would take multiple textures as input and generate a map. This is a very early prototype and will need a lot of improvements, but here is the basic idea:


- First we generate different textures in any painting program (each pixel will be a tile in game). One texture is for the terrain, one for the roads and one for the buildings (I will probably add others, for example for the trees, rocks, zombies densities...).

Left: The hand drawn map, Right: The resulting map ingame​

- Next each color used in the textures is mapped to game elements. The mapping is done using an xml file which is read in the game.
- Finally I load the png and go through each pixel using the color information and the xml, and I generate each tile for each texture, swapping the texture as necessary.

XML file mapping the color to the game element​

One of the next things that I will work on is getting rid of the ugly seams when generating the map and generating zones with higher densities of trees (which can also be defined for higher densities of zombies).

Seams between different tile types​

II] Resources List


Forsaken: Year One has a lot of resources. At the moment, there are about 100 and I plan on growing it a lot more than that. All the resources are represented in xml files (more on that in a later post), with information on the affects they have, their cost, and any other relevant information.

Resource List XML File
​

With such interconnected resources and huge documents, it is really hard to visualize what is already there and how they are connected. I was looking for a solution to solve this problem and the best thing I came up with was to display the resources and connections in a diagram software. (http://dia-installer.de/)

Even though this is not yet ideal, it makes everything a lot clearer and easier to modify and extend. It is still missing some interesting features, such as visualizing the connection by clicking the resource box, and most importantly have it parse an xml file and be able to output a result xml file to be used in the game.

Resources display in Dia ​

II] Storyteller


The last thing I have developed is a basic storyteller. The idea is that all game elements will be generated by this storyteller, given a unique set of rules. Keeping the generation in a specific class or set of classes will allow me to easily expand a given storyteller and implement new ones with different set of rules. It also allows us to modify generation parameters easily given any context.


The current storyteller randomly generates game elements and keeps track of everything that has already been generated.

A future interesting storyteller would be having one that checks the game state before making any decisions. For example, if the user already owns 1500 food, no additional food will be generated until the player’s reserves decrease. So it could either give the player what he needs at all times, or on the contrary try to keep him on his toes and never allow him to have a flourishing society and always have to fight for every resource and take some tough decisions (exile one of his survivors so that the other can survive a little longer)


Thank you for reading through the entire text, and don’t hesitate the comment and share your thoughts on the game, I love hearing about it, and it will help me make the game better!



Thank you for reading through the entire text, and don’t hesitate the comment and share your thoughts on the game, I love hearing about it, and it will help me make the game better!

Follow us:
Website, Facebook, Twitter, IndieDB

 

Is this still being worked on?

 

Hey!

Most definitely, I'll work on it until i'm dead ;-) I'll post a video very soon to show the work I've been doing for the last few months (spoiler: I moved to full 3D with dynamic light, time of day ect ect )

Also, your question made me really happy, and increased my motivation, so thank you very much

 

I am normally not at all a fan of this art style - but somehow this looks great.

 

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the complete radio silence for all those months. I have been really completely overhauling Forsaken's facade and making it 3D, fixing bugs and trying to make it fun. Nothing is finished, but I am finally confident in what I have. So I am extremely happy and excited to be able to show you the game's new look!!!

So here is a video I made explaining the basic gameplay: cleaning buildings and combat in the first devblog video.

I have added a weather system, dynamic shadows and much more and I will be showing all that in the future!

I would love to hear your comments and criticism, it really helped and helps me make the game better!

Thank you!

Shanat

Follow us:
Facebook, Twitter, IndieDB

PS: If you liked the 2D art style, I hope you like this style too

 

Nice to see an update.
I respect the move to 3D, but there are a few things I'd change to get it looking right:

The grass: I know this one is tricky, I had issues with getting grass to look right also. Currently, with the free movement of the camera, sometimes you see that the grass consists of just flat pieces on the ground. Also it is not shaded properly and currently has too much yellow tint in it (it doesn't look dry) and lacks color variation. Aside from the flatness, it should be easy to fix.

Lighting: Currently it's too flat. Possibly you could look into some post processing effects like obscurance or occlusion to add more distinct contrast in some areas. I'd also look into getting the color of the lighting to reflect the tone of the weather more. So go towards slightly blue when it's raining, add a bit of extra heat to the environment when it's sunny by adding more orange. Hints of red almost, in the morning etc. Also, at some points in the video I noticed that shadows do not correspond to actual objects in view (This is probably nothing huge really and you might have already noticed it.):

And the pebble path leading out from one of the houses could maybe be designed so that it is more a few flat rocks surrounded by grass, so that it blends with the environment. Or maybe you are going for a sort of tile set with smooth edges?

The battle icons I assume are a work in progress, so that will improve.

Other than that it seems to control quite well and it's going to be interesting to see how you develop the move to 3D further. It's ambitious, and will require a bit of work, but could really push the game into new territory.
Edit: Forgot to write, keep up the good work.

 

Yes, It was about time for an update ;-)

Very interesting about the grass. I'll look into it (what I can at least, I am not an artist so my abilities are limited until I can work with a proper one). Thanks for pointing that out.

I really like your comments on the lighting, that's really interesting and I can see the improvements with your description. I'll definitely integrate that later on!

That line you point out in the screenshot is probably due to an integration issue with the weather/time of day package that I'm using. (I hope, if not it's the package and I'll have to change and use another one)
Definitely a must fix soon as it breaks a bit the overall look.

I think I'll just remove the pebble path for now. It looks fake and definitely doesnt blend with the environment. It was some tests I was doing with the houses that I didnt notice until finishing the video.

Thanks a lot for all the feedback and kind words, it's of extremely high value for me and I really appreciate it.

Shanat

 

Hi Everyone!

Just a quick update today. I've been working on polishing the game with the aim of releasing a demo as soon as possible.

With that in mind, I've been added torches that turn on at night and I think improve the mood and feel during that time.



I've also added blood spurts as feedback when hitting an enemy during combat. This is still very early, and I'm just playing around but I think the feel is a lot more interesting with that.

Finally I've also updated the Objectives menu and removed the ugly green boxes.



If you want to see all that in movement, check out this imgur album: http://imgur.com/a/4Cwh3

I'd love to hear your feedback, it will be of great help while preparing the demo!

Thanks a lot!

Shanat

 

Nice updates. I wouldn't go overboard with the blood spatter and also vary the color and shape a bit, but it looks like it has potential.
In the last image, grass is sticking through the porch of the house to the right. You could probably standardize your houses to always have a similar base height, and ensure the grass is lower than this, that way you will avoid grass sticking through without adding any other tricks.

When are you planning to have the demo ready?

 

Ha, I totally agree, I was just playing around with a ton of blood but toned it down now. Here's what is looks like now:



I fixed the grass and trees going through the houses and added some fog to add a more creepy mood as well as SSAO.



There is still more work to be done on the blood but I think it looks better already. What do you think?

Regarding the demo, I would like to have it ready by september. I won't rush it though, so if it's not ready by then, it'll be a bit later. I really want it to be fun and give a good first impression.

 

Ooh, I like the addition of SSAO, adds a bit more depth to the scene and makes the lighting less flat.
Improved blood spatter and addition of fog looks good too. Have you considered maybe adding a slight vignette?

How long after the apocalypse is this? I was thinking all houses look kind of fresh (aside from the odd broken window shutter), could be a nice addition to have maybe a burnt down house, a completely rusted up car. But overall it's looking good and cohesive. If anything I'd look into an antialiasing solution (unity standard effect could do to begin with) to get rid of some jagged edges and, of course, still polish up the grass (color and shape) a bit, although it looks much better now with SSAO.

Looking forward to testing it, but do take your time.

 

Hello everyone,

Here is the second DevBlog video! I wanted to show the different improvements that I've been working on for the last 3 weeks.

To sum up here are the improvements:
- Added SSAO and Vignette effect as suggested by MSD
- More believable world by adding combat scenes around the village
- More believable world by adding blood splatter, corpses and zombie eating dead survivors
- At night, captured buildings will be lit up with torches and infected buildings will stay dark
- Added various different animations for walking and idling zombies
- Added death animation when killing a zombie or a survivor.

So without futher ado:

Regarding the timing of the apocalypse. In this scenario, I want it to be right after the apocalypse, or a few days at most. In later version, I would love to have different scenarios where we don't only consider a zombie apocalypse, but other kinds (some that come to mind would be nuclear apocalypse, a disease that killed most of the population, or some event that cause all technology to stop working, which would mean a lot of survivors but little food for everyone and thus you can't help everyone...)

I would love to hear your comments and criticism, it really helped and helps me make the game better!

Thank you!

Shanat

Follow us:
Facebook, Twitter, IndieDB, Instagram

 

Looks like things are coming along quite nicely.
I'd say the splatter is still a bit too extreme and "blobby" for my taste, personally I would make it more like thin streaks that fall to the ground, but that could be a matter of what art style you are going for.
Also, I noticed the outline for buildings is a bit slow to follow the camera, is that just a result of recording the video or something related to the outline shader itself? Also, is there a way to remove it from overlapping ui objects?

Different scenarios would be cool Allows for more variation in play styles, so if done right it could really extend the replayability a great deal. Looking forward to testing the demo when the time comes.

 

Good morning everyone!

I have been working on a teaser for the new version of Forsaken! Here is the current version. I'd love any comment on it so I can keep improving it !

I had made a similar teaser a year ago, with the old art style, if you're interested in seeing the evolution:

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks!

 

Hey!

The outline issue is in the game also, not just the recording, but I haven't looked at it yet to fix it... Also, I have looked a bit into the fixing it overlapping the UI objects, and it's due to the package I am using drawing the outline in the OnGUI function... will take some time to modify properly, but I'm not sure yet how to do it.

I'm really excited about the different scenarios. It'll take a lot of work but I believe it's worth it too. But one thing at a time, zombies first