early concept

 * everything here is very rough and in early stages

Prologue:

Boat city has no access to any body of water. Yet boats are scattered here and there, random people wear marine uniforms, but life itself is normal. Underneath that normal life though, punks, skins and metals are in constant fight with fascist and natzi groups. They fight for dominance and safety of their fellows, have their hierarchy, rules, legends, important places and people - a city underneath another one. 

Boat city is ruled by punks (well, the city itself doesn’t know about it, but it’s important for all those subcultures). They have a leader, or more like a symbol of unity than an actual authority. He gets killed, probably. In the chaos that emerged, natzi and fascists took the throne and ruled out punks, skins and metals out of majority of their territories. Only a few places, mostly on peripheries, remained safe. The war between two groups had begun. The city itself didn’t really notice.

Game start:

First - a choice. Punk, metal or skin? Each has their own combat style, their own weapon, stats and bonuses. Then another choice - shoelaces. Red, white, pink etc. and the way of tying them. To which group exactly do you belong?

The character, no name for now, has seen the fall, the chaos. He, as all the others from his group, wants to take back what’s theirs, to defeat the natzi king. He will face bosses, some more absurd than others (like a natzi transformer?), make decisions, and eventually, help shape the future of the local subcultures. 

Current state of things

Mechanics: ?

This is problematic for now, as we are not sure about the exact direction of fighting mechanics. Should it be possible to start the fight with each npc? Should it be more like a duel in classic fighter games? What if there are multiple enemies, or what if you have teammates?

The ideas we have now are random side mechanics:

- being able to find different outfits and unlock shoelace variations (image below) which give different bonuses. Finding them either by exploring the game or through side quests. 

- dialogues for sure

- fighting not only story related characters, but also confronting police from time to time, and randomly getting into fights with Bananas (polish slang for Varsovians - basically a way to call rich people)

This is still early. We’re figuring out the story, systems, characters, and visuals piece by piece. But this post should give a general sense of the tone, themes, and the world.

blog intro

 Hi!

In short, this blog is gonna be ( hopefully ) just a “dev log” of a game inspired by łódź (polish town - literary “boat”) and punk subculture. I don’t really make games, or intend to make this one, it’s just an idea my partner and I want to develop, and this blog is for keeping track of the progress and evolution of the project. Mostly art and story related, as neither of us are connected to programming side of things, and learning to code isn’t our priority. I am a concept/bg artist and animator, and he’s a game master and has more experience with gaming in general. 

As this project is not our most important one, any work will be made in our spare time and occasionally. The goal is to develop an idea, come up with gameplay and mechanics, construct a non linear story, make a bunch of concept arts, designs and background, animate a bit, and most importantly to have fun. And to keep track of it, by writing this blog. Making a functional game is not something we’re thinking about, not in the nearest future at least. 

There’s no deadline or pressure to finish it ( but hopefully we’ll wrap up the conceptual phase).

For anyone reading, thanks for your time!