Unity and Numenera

As at least one person keeps reminding me, I haven’t made any posts over the last two weeks. This has been due to a combination of factors that have distracted me from my regular schedule…

Unity, of course, is a major part of that. I fell into a programming rabbit hole and got caught up spending a lot of time putting together a test environment for a game I’ve been thinking about making for a long time, the working title of which is The Stygian Marsh. Honestly, even after spending all of this time working on it, I don’t have a whole lot to show for it. I could have thrown together something much simpler — I mentioned in my last post how amazed I was at how easy it is to churn out something crap in Unity.

The game is set in the Greek Underworld, circa the 1800s — the player wakes up in the Stygian marshes, where the five rivers of the Underworld mingle, with hazy holes in their memory thanks to a dip in the Lethe. The first notable area that the player finds is Melinoë’s Refuge, a saloon/bar on stilts in the middle of the marsh, run by the Greek goddess of nightmares and ghosts. The idea is a dialog-heavy exploration game that primarily revolves around interacting with interesting characters in a Western-themed take on the Greek Underworld, working out why you’re there (turns out you’re not dead) and currying the favour of the powerful beings that call this place their home to reach your goal (once you remember what that is).

Anyway, I’ve put in quite a few hours making Melinoë’s Refuge as best I can, as well as doing some preliminary work on getting the dialog and menu system all sorted out. I’ve put a couple of screenshots of the place I’ve been working on below.

There’s also a kitchen, storeroom, and private room at the back, though those are a bit more incomplete. So far, I’m pretty happy with it, but it’s difficult to get a hold of free or really cheap assets that are worthwhile enough to bother with. My next big challenge is character models — as I said, this is supposed to be a dialog heavy game, so obviously you need people to talk to. Unfortunately, free/cheap character models are even more difficult to get than other assets. I’ve got a program called MakeHuman that I’ve started experimenting with that seems pretty good, but a major hurdle there is still going to be having appropriate attire for my NPCs.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing with Unity. I’ll be trying to get back into a more regular writing schedule this week, while still not abandoning what I’ve been working on.

The other big thing that’s been distracting me is that Torment: Tides of Numenera came out last week.

So yeah, at home all day it’s easy to get distracted by TV, movies, and video games. I’d mostly been successful at resisting that, until this one dropped. TToN is a spiritual successor to what is still my favourite game of all time, Planescape: Torment. Among other things, I can give PST credit for getting me into tabletop roleplaying (my biggest hobby) in the first place, as one of the first things that got me interested in D&D was looking at a copy of the 3.0 Psionics Handbook in a store because it had githzerai in it.

I backed TToN when it first launched on Kickstarter and have been patiently waiting for four years for the damn thing to be released. I was not disappointed. Over the past week, I’ve clocked 29 hours in the game.

TToN is, of course, a deeply flawed game. There are a lot of issues with the mechanics, and the second half of the game feels very rushed compared to the polish of the first half. Still, it’s a lovely tribute to everything good about PST… the setting is weird and wonderfully colourful, with layers of complexity that keep you interested as you pull together information and knowledge that helps propel you forward in the plot. The companions, while not quite as good as those in PST, and still very well-realised characters with fun personalities and satisfying story arcs of their own. The quests, and complex web of possible solutions to various situations, are well written and interesting. The music is atmospheric and is very reminiscent of the PST soundtrack. In fact, there is almost too many references and too much that is reminiscent of PST — there were a few times where I sort of went ‘…really?’ at something’s  inclusion.

It isn’t as good as PST. I mean, PST isn’t that great a game, but I don’t think TToN is going to stick with me and provoke fifteen or more replays the same way that PST did. Still, I am one satisfied customer — my only disappointment is that it wasn’t longer (finished?! already!? but I want mooooore!).

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