Wiz_Mud

Dev Log #3 - The Lore Zone

Added 2024-06-01 02:48:24 +0000 UTC

The timeline of the dungeon spans generations. It’s been unearthed, co-opted, exploited, reburied, and forgotten again by our ancestors and our ancestor’s ancestors, who deemed it a danger to civilization and all around creepy and weird, giving off bizarre Jumanji type vibes mixed with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. influences.

The dungeon’s been unearthed once again, this time in the 21st century. Down here you’re likely to come across the remnants of its most recent dwellers, composed of various groups with different motivations. You may come across campsites of other explorers like yourselves, an ancient ritual chamber that someone recently held a LAN party in, or strange government facilities that pave right over the dungeon’s masonry.

Some campsites

Lately when I talk to people on messenger I like to idly scroll through this FB group page dedicated to liminal spaces, it's awesome and has some deeper cuts that I can't find on google images or twitter. I guess liminal spaces are all the rage right now but I really dig them too and I want the dungeon aspect of this game to feel sort of like that. To us, the familiar dungeon-like network of bricks, stones, torches is this transitory “liminal” space, but upon opening an old wooden door you may find yourself in a place that doesn't feel quite right / unsettling /funny/ weird.

Below is one new space we’re working on, it’s a facility designed to observe the effects of dropping junk into this green pool of goop.

I've been wanting to create more spaces like this that feel like they could be exterior, but are totally interior. Kinda like this classic liminal space but inside of a cave lol.

LORE

“A government team was tasked with establishing a base of operations for the C.O.O.P. initiative (Continuity Of Operations)

After getting lost and losing contact with their supervisors, the team began receiving radio transmissions claiming that, due to some global catastrophe, C.O.O.P must now go into effect. The mysterious person or thing behind the transmissions seems to have the proper clearances and authority, stating that research must continue and that their new task is to drop things into this goop and see what happens.”

The whereabouts and condition of the team are presently unknown, but players can explore their abandoned research facility and will be able to learn about their story probably through internal emails or notes or something like that. Some themes of this beat are institutionalism, progressivism and the magic and horror of reality governed by the alchemical. It sounds heavy and dark maybe, but we’re gonna inject a lot of humor into it. We have alot of ideas for the different inhabitants of the dungeon, so we hope there’ll be a lot of different stories to follow along.

Gameplay-wise I think it’d be cool to have players traverse to the top floor to complete some objective. Once players reach the top, if they look down through the window they’ll see a bunch of monsters and rats come out of the goop and then have to fight their way back down.

Extremely unfinished interior ^