Introduction
Hi, IndieDB community !
Welcome to our third article of our game: “Bracara Augusta: Shadow of the Past”. Today we are going to talk about our game's mechanics.
Mechanics and environment
In the previous entries we explain the context of the game and how the ruins are nowadays. But what about the actions we can perform in the game? Well today we answer that question.
Bracara Augusta: Shadow of the past mechanics are related to the environment of the game. The character is going to see itself in an underground ruin surrounded by stones and dirt. And the first thing it needs to do is explore.
To be able to explore, our main character will walk around in the ruins trying to find a way out. Thankfully, we are not alone in our journey since a Roman spirit will guide us in our journey and help us escape.
In many instances, our character doesn’t know what is looking at and the spirit will explain to us what we are seeing.
We started to make some programming tests to implement these mechanics and for now it’s possible to see the NPC's interaction test and the character movement.
Image 1: NPC's interaction test
Image 2: Player's movement
As you can see in image 2, the blue placeholder is going to be our spirit helper.
Every time it sees something relevant for our journey or when we get stuck in some puzzle, it will come forward and help us. It will also follow us around throughout the ruins.
During the exploration of the ruins, many rocks and stones have fallen down and have blocked some paths. In many instances, our character will have to push and pull around some rocks and stones, in order to open up the path.
Image 3: Push and pull mechanic
And what about the illumination? In the underground the natural sunlight cannot reach us, so in many places the ruins will be submerged in darkness.
Fortunately some oil lamps are scattered around the place and we are able to light them up in order to see the room and unlock some mechanisms.
Image 4: Lighting up an oil lamp
Image 4: Light effects of the environment
To summarize, this week we were focused on game mechanics and their relation to the game world.
We are still developing all the systems so that they will merge with the environment as natural as possible, but some magic is still lingering about.
In this week we also established some narrative points important for the game. But that is a subject for a future article.
Have a nice week
Stay safe!
Ave Bracara Augusta
