DevLog #1 – Project Stasis
Hello everyone!
We are happy to initiate what will hopefully become a long series of devlogs to talk about our game development process and to show you our latest work. We members of Radiant Sloth are a bunch of young people with computer science background wanting to make our very own indie game. We already put a lot of effort in what we call Project “Stasis”, and we decided it was time to start sharing with you people what we do on a regular basis. We’d be happy to read your thoughts and feedback, so do not hesitate to comment if you desire so.
What kind of game?
Project “Stasis” is an action adventure RPG singleplayer game that will feature 2D pixel graphics. We build the game with the five following pillars in mind.
Combat
We want fast-paced gun combat, whether it be against various small monsters or bosses. We chose for now not to add a melee weapon on purpose. We want to keep the fighting at range and to get inspiration from games like Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon. During your adventure, you will acquire skills and many items that you can use to build your own fighting style and get bullets to go completely crazy. We want combat to have challenge but also to be the place where some real fun can happen.
Exploration
You will be thrown into a wonderful world with several biomes. Exploring the land to reach far places will be essential to progress through the adventure, but careful explorers who take time to investigate it all will be rewarded with hidden treasures, lore, and unique side quests. Didn’t we all dream of traveling to unknown places and discover incredible wonders at some point of our life?
Puzzles
Solving puzzles is fun. Sure, it may cause headaches but ultimately finding the solution is so satisfying, right? That’s why we can’t resist to put a lot of puzzles in this game. They will involve physics, environmental obstacles and special devices you can trigger with your gun (you didn’t believe it was only for fighting, did you?).
Leveling
Through your adventure, you will collect skill points and money. The former allows you to unlock some permanent upgrades (like improving your stats or choosing special abilities), while the former helps you acquire equipment and consumables. You can also get those through completing quests or finding hidden treasures. At the end of the day, you character will match your play style.
Story
We will reveal more about the plot later on, but here is a pitch for starters:
You play as Emi, a young spaceship pilot stuck in a virtual world. Through exploration, solving puzzles, fighting enemies and meeting with the rest of her crew, she tries to wake her body up from stasis and to discover the true stakes of her mission.
Working on a new demo
Project “Stasis” is the continuation of a prototype game called Uniwardens at the time a v0.1 demo was released (you can still find it here on itch.io). Since then, we made a lot of changes. We improved the core code, cleaned a lot, and wrote new code to better handle the project as it will scale. We also took time to think more precisely about where we’re going with this project. We thought about a whole new story to replace the old one (we may explain in a future post what motivated such a change), implemented new systems and started to involve more people into this crazy game idea we have.
For now, we are working on finalizing the core mechanics. Most are already working well, but others are still work in progress. Our biggest current challenge is about physics. We want to game to remain 2D, but to really feel 3D as the player moves through the world. This creates a lot of challenges we tackle one at a time.
We hope to release a v0.2 Tech Demo for Q2 2021. It will include the first dungeon of the game, with some puzzles, some enemy monsters and a boss fight. To ease your wait, we will keep you updated with devlogs and we hope to show you some in-game screenshots soon.
Until next time!