Hi and welcome, IndieDB fans of Pale Blue :)
Today we'd love to share you our current progress on the development of the Edible Citizen. What is it? Well, here we go~!
Edible Human
Yes, you read that right. “Eating People” is definitely one of the most exciting aspects of the game. By eating people and objects, Ellen gains temporary enhancements, bonuses, and even transient abilities.
In Pale Blue, a player won’t always start in the lab, factory, or other typical scenes as we frequently find in a platform game. Occasionally, a player will start in a densely populated city filled with enemies, but just as in any city, also have to deal with innocent bystanders. That’s not to say that in the lab or factory levels you won’t encounter innocent bystanders, you’ll sometimes meet innocent scientists, workers, even janitor staff that will succumb to Ellen’s insatiable appetite.
Although they will be innocent bystanders, they’re not just going to stand there and allow themselves to be torn apart by Ellen. Each citizen will exhibit various unique behaviors depending on the situation; some of them will just run away when they witness Ellen doing something horrible, while others will be best summarized as ‘deer in headlights’ - struck with fear. We’ve even opened up the possibility that people will retaliate and throw stones at Ellen! Naturally, people will become hysterical when they see dead corpses, but others are more curious and will want to get closer instead and take some pictures~
Here's a WIP idle animation of a busy citizen:
On the current mock-up, you could see someone being eaten, right? The image shown below is the animation of it. We will definitely have more than a single animation of people dying which will be triggered randomly when they die, or sparked by certain action that caused their death.
As for the in-game screenshots, here is the picture showing Ellen devouring a man:
Awareness Parameter
In order to improve the mechanic of these edible citizen and idle bystanders, we are developing a feature called 'Awareness Parameter'. This is a system similar to what you will find in Grand Theft Auto or the Assassins Creed series. In Pale Blue, there will be a parameter that indicates levels of awareness and alertness of people within the vicinity of Ellen that will alert her to presence / danger. Ironically, what this means is that actually Ellen is the threat - tables are turned in this scenario, so they better watch out! ;)
In most missions, players will be given the freedom to smash pretty much everything and consume any humans. But beware - especially in the cities - the more uproar Ellen creates, there will be more and more enemies coming to try to put Ellen down - think of it like Grand Theft Auto when the police waves get stronger and stronger as you create more destruction, this may distract you from fulfilling the real objective. You can always avoid unnecessary chaos by hiding or getting away from crowded places and wait until the alertness meter cools down.
That's it for today's update! Feel free to share any of your thoughts regarding the game :)
Cheers,
XiaoStella of Pale Blue Dev Team
