Intertwined

The dev-blog for the 2D rogue-lite co-op game Intertwined by Barely Alive Studio. Follow the development of this twin-swapping adventure as we prepare for GGC 2024.

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About the game Intertwined

Legends tell of sleeping protectors who will be awoken in a time of need, to fight the evil, endangering the people. In this rogue-lite 2D co-op game, venture deep within a Slavic forest filled with magic, promise and dangerous beauty. Try again and again to fulfill your duty and break the cycle!

Intertwine is a 2D game set to release on Windows, developed on the Unity Engine. It is a top-down game using Slavic folklore and locations. The players assume the roles of Yasna and Yasen, two mysterious twins gifted with powers beyond that of ordinary humans. Awakened after a long entombed slumber, the twins finds themselves requested by an ancient kingdom to kill Baba Yaga, who has been plaguing the kingdom and who also seems to have a profound connection to the twins as well.

The game features hand-drawn art styles rendered in the style of 2D top downs, using high definition lighting and post-processing. Intertwineds game-play loop is heavily inspired by the rogue-lite game-play, where the level is a mix of procedural generated levels and premade areas with defined objectives. The progression system is non-linear with the opportunities to retain and upgrade your characters feature over time instead of permanently losing everything. Our biggest feature is the ability to share this experience with up another player, making unique builds each run to support each other. When played single-player, the player will be able to switch and upgrade each twin during the games runs.

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Magic

"The magic comes from the Earth. As people we can only ask it to do our bidding. We do not control the flow of it, we cannot demand anything of it."

In the slavic mythology magic is mainly concentrated in the nature itself. Slavic people believed that everything possesses a spirit - that can be interacted with. This is how they performed rituals and magic spells, by asking the spirits to do things that were beyond the ability of humans.

In our game, we wanted to emulate that by making sure that any magical ability, additional bonuses or boosts do not come from the characters themselves but are an extension of the world they are exploring.

That is why we have created a living experience points - fireflies, that are the primary source of magic in the game. Only by finding and claiming them, the heroes can upgrade themselves and unlock new abilities.

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About the twins!

"Everything in my mind is blurry. I can’t exactly remember… The world, the sun, the nature… and people. I was gone for a long time… but now… who has awoken me?"

It is time to reveal our protagonists - siblings, Yasna and Yasen. And frankly, they do not get confused as much as you would think.

To design their stories we have decided to repurpose an old Polish tale of sleeping knights beneath the Tarta Mountains, that wait to be called upon in a time of great need. We have made Yasna and Yasen sleeping protectors of the human race that are the last line of defence against Baba Yaga's dark spells and monsters - but on the main antagonist later.

Meet Yasna, a brave and dedicated girl who more than everything wants to get the job done and save the lives of innocents. She is striving to become better and better and has a deep rooted hatred towards the devils and evil spirits that roam the world.

…and meet Yasen. More level-headed sibling, who likes more to asks questions and wander about their mission. Is that all there is to it? Where did they come from and who made them fall asleep in the first place?

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Big Brown Bears

Contrary to what people may believe, the bears were good entities in Slavic folklore. They were protectors and patrons of the wild, the holy animal of the goddess of the hunt and their presence was thought to be purifying for the forest. They were known to be rather peaceful around humans, as long as they remained at a distance, and did not like the human meat.

In our game however, they are a bestial, ferocious, monsters, who protect the wild from the heroes. The journey to kill the Evil inside the forest is a danger to the bears’ domain.

To keep things interesting, bears have two different attacks, that they will use according to the health threshold they reach. Other than that, they too have a special action, in which they can speed themselves up, to catch up with the player. The bears are often seen as a slow attackers, but this is an opinion of people who have never seen a bear in action.

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Ogniki - Fire Spirits

In the Slavic forest there was more than just one way to die. It was a very wild and uncharted domain and was said to be a place of magic and terror. One of the danger was said to be spirit lights – ogniki - that lead people through the darkness of the woods. It would hardly ever end in a good way, the spirits did not have the good of the traveller in their hearts and would most likely lead them astray, away from the path and very likely to a dangerous, possibly deadly places.

Form the design point, we opted for a simpler, cleaner design, a ball of fire and light. We tested various colours but settled on those who used colours from our enemy palette which emerged naturally from our ideas.

Red, orange and yellow strongly tie the visuals of the fires spirits with the fire and light, and at the same time do not infringe on the palette that we created for the heroes’ magic effects.

The fire spirits are said to be souls of people who seek redemption for the sins that they have committed in their life. In our game, that is a factor that sways them to be obedient to Baba Jaga and Leszy – the lords of the forest. As the spirits do the lords’ bidding – fighting off the heroes, they, in turn, make spirits’ wretched existence a bit easier.

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Wiły - Forest's deceptive spirits

In Slavic folklore, there are myriads of evil girls and women that try to use and kill unknowing travellers. Be that lake, river, forest or mountains, each have their own type of pretty poisons. One of those types, mostly recognised by the south regions of the Slavic lands were named Wiły.

Those particular forest spirits would sometimes be benevolent, warning villagers or travellers of the bad weather or guiding them through the forest but when angered or simply encountered when in a bad mood they would be a fearsome enemy.

Their favourite thing to do would be to cause the travellers to become mad or fill their heads with unfulfillable desires driving them insane with lust.

They probably share their origins with Greek nymphs, that is why they look a lot alike. Young women with skimpy dresses and an affinity to wear a lot of flowers. In our game we made a decision to change their look to match it more with the devils, pale skin, and make them less human, to not prompt the players to spare them.

The forest spirits are one of the ranged enemies, they have different projectiles that they will use to kill the players. They are protecting their own home from the invading heroes and align their interests with those of Baba Jaga and Leszy.

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Wolves

Let’s not pretend otherwise. This monster is the first idea that comes to mind if we think of the dangers lurking inside the forest. So it was for the Slavic people. In their folklore wolves were seen as a danger, an ill omen and a form that most of the evil spirits would assume to try to hide themselves. Wolves were also known to travel in packs, so spotting just one would mean there are other nearby, ready to strike from any direction.

In our game, wolves retain this behaviour. Other than ferociously attacking the heroes who entered their lands, they will communicate with other wolves on the map by howling, to try to gather them in one place – a place where they spotted the heroes.

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Devils and Demons

When looking for main antagonists in Slavic folklore we must turn our gaze to all kinds of demons and devils. They became prominent partially because of later Christian influences and their easy translation to imagery of Satan, but before that, demons were known to be either an everyday headache for Slavic people and sometimes even a serious danger – especially in the wild.

Demons and devils lurk in the Slavic forests, plotting and scheming. In our game, as they became one of the lowest tiers of enemies, they do just that – lurk. They appear in both, melee and ranged types, and try to kill the heroes, protect the deeper parts of the forest.

During the design part, we made them as being part of the civilisation and part of the forest – a wicked, corrupted humans, mirroring the hero designs. We wanted to portray them human-like, but the posture, pale skin and black-red palette should make a stark contrast with the hero design.

Devils serve the lords of the forest – Baba Jaga or Leszy, as they are the powerful protectors and rulers of this realm.

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Zmora - Evil Spirits

One of the most basic fears for humans is darkness. And such fear has its own embodiment in Slavic folklore in an evil dark spirit – Zmora. Those spirits are animalistic interpretations of unspoken horrors lurking in the dark and bad dreams tormenting the humans. They are winged and ethereal, can enter closed homes and can influence the humans mind, hurting them psychically.

When designing the evil spirits, we tried both animalistic and human-like approach, but ultimately settled for a bat-like creature with added classic, spirit, tattered cloth.

In the game, evil spirits are melee attackers which additionally may use – from time to time – a life drain attack, that will activate on collision.

They do not follow any orders but as naturally evil spirits they do attack the heroes on their trek into the woods. The best way to combat their darkness is to fight them with light.

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Thank you!

First part of the project - GGC showcase, is done, and with that we want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who have come, played our demo and gave us, always valuable, feedback.

This is not the end!

The game will undergo some changes but ultimately the project lives on with fresh ideas and new energy.

Don't forget to check up on us from time to time and by the end of the summer, hopefully, we will have more news to share. The updates from now on will be more frequent, focused on the game theme and ideas as well as the tasks for the weeks work!

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First playtest is done!

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Our third sprint was dedicated to making a playable version of our game to display at the playtest, which we accomplished!

We now have:

A starting menu where the players can select if they want to play singleplayer or multiplayer

A starting level with monsters to dodge and attack

A twin switching ability

Firefly (currency) collection

Damage system

Short-ranged, mid-ranged and long-ranged attack abilites

These are some of the things we learned from the playtest:

Change damage colour from red to white to see the numbers better as well as differentiate between enemy damage and player damage more clearly.

Adding "juice" or "feedback" like knock-back, audio, i-frames and animation etc. to communicate player-input.

The art comes across the way we want to in the games current form, which we are very happy about!

Playtests are very important for gathering the opinions and views of players from a player perspective. It's very easy as a game developer to assume things will be percieved or work a certain way but the reality can be way different, thank you for today! We are halfway there to the conferance with plenty of new features and treats in store for Intertwined. Look forward to it!

[metamorphgame]

Greetings Buglovers <333

We're Jackdaw, a small indie game development team that are currently making a game called "Metamorph" for our course Game Production 2: Vertical Slice.

STEAM RELEASE? YES. WHEN? WE DON'T KNOW!!

We are:

Pilma: tumblr veteran, lead writer, QA person, and half a project manager (i'm the P), she/her

Milliam: tumblr know-nothing, lead programmer, QA person, and the other half of the project manager (he's the M), he/him

Maya: Retired sims tumblrina, 3D lord and savior working in Maya (that's how i got my name), she/her

(and also two more people but we don't know yet how/if they want to be introduced)

Pitch, link to artstation, and taglist under readmore.

Metamorph is a low-poly 3D horror game that blends body horror and a narrative about growing up in a body that very quickly becomes foreign to you with aspects of the visual novel genre. The game is envisioned as a slow-paced atmospheric game that aims to envoke a growing sense of discomfort in an environment that slowly progresses and evolves alongside the player. You play as a high school girl who wakes up one day and realizes she is slowly but surely turning into a twisted, bizarre cockroach monster. With this realization, she sets out to score a date with her crush before her grotesque transformation is complete. Will she succeed... Or will the pressures of high school and being stuck in a horrifying lovecraftian nightmare be too much? Play through an engaging story about teenage woes, explore a detailed 3D environment, experience a variety of minigames and prove that appearances aren't anything, even when said appearances are a bit unconventional.

Now that the pitch is over: Follow us for bug-related memes, incredibly professional shitposting, two unqualified project managers that definitely know what they're doing, incredibly cool art, kafkaesque body-horror, and sickkkk vibessss. trust. B)

Want to see the concept art? Check it out here!

TAG LIST:

shitposting: #stupid stuff actual updates: #game updates discord screenshots: #metamorph discord

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Follow our fellow course buddies at Jackdaw for a silly, creepy and romantic experience in their game Metamorph!

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Goals

So, what are our current goals for this project? Our main goal for this project is to make a vertical slice for GGC, or Gotland Game Conference during the 3rd to the 5th of June in the beautiful medieval town of Visby.

To reach this goal in this time-frame, we want to have:

Interesting and enjoyable combat, with a unique and smooth "switching" mechanic that works with singleplayer and co-op.

Challenging levels that end in an epic boss-fight to give a small but enticing taste of the full game.

Gorgeous graphics that helps communicate the game-play to the players as well as the culture that the games story is based on.

Implementing audio and soundtrack that fits the feel and aesthetic of our game.

And last but not least;

Displaying our game at GGC with a nice booth, making connections with players and other developers attending.