Hello everyone! First off I'd like to apologize for being absent last week after saying we'd break our hiatus. Unfortunately we had some pretty significant issues that were out of our control and we could not write a proper update. Throughout this week we pondered doing a mid week update, but we figured we'd wait til Sunday so we'd have more to show!
First off, a quick update on how the actual writing's progressing! It's exciting stuff, we have hit 30000 words and are nearly done with chapter 3! This chapter was developed immediately after chapter 1 due to both writer's block for chapter 2 and its importance to the overall plot being much greater, chapter 2 being mostly used for characterization and some lore exploration. Due to this, we decided to prioritize chapter 3 featuring what we believe are very strong character moments in a major fight scene we're very excited to have you experience!
As we made clear before this game runs on a stat based system that goes like this:
- Strength is a stat used for offensive actions or getting obstacles out of the way. When you take an aggressive stance in combat, you'll often need this.
- Agility is a stat used for both dashing into battle and avoiding it. Anything that relies on speed or dodging will likely have Agility involved.
- Grit is your defensive prowess, it represents how much you can take while managing to shrug it off. If you're blocking attacks, you'll be using this.
- Intelligence is your knowledge of both magic and tactics. When it comes to identifying certain magical constructs like crystals and the like, and when it comes to taking a tactical approach to battle, you'll need Intelligence.
- Insight is your knowledge about other people. It helps you interact with others by identifying how they want to be spoken to and in battle you can use it to try to misdirect your enemies.
- Perception is your ability to notice the intricacies of the world. It lets you notice details that would escape others and identify weak points in other people.
So with that explained, it's a good time to get to the wound system!
Wounds are divided by body parts: Head, arms, legs, and torso. By making certain decisions and failing certains stat checks throughout the game you can get a wound in specific bodyparts according to what happened. Wounds apply a penalty to your stats and they stack up to 3, scaling from light to serious to life threatening. Upon taking 5 wounds overall, or 4 wounds in a specific body part, it's game over.
Wounds are worse left unattended, each stack worsening the penalties you take:
- Light wounds give you -2 to a stat
- Severe wounds give you -6
- Life Threatening wounds give you -10
As for which body part deals with each stat:
- Arm wounds reduce Strength
- Leg wounds reduce Agility
- Torso wounds reduce Grit
- Head wounds reduce Perception and Insight
Since Intelligence has fewer uses than the other stats, we decided it would not be affected by the wound system.
With all that dealt with, maybe some art updates are in order. How about some of the lovely 3D props and environments created by our artist friend who very graciously offered her help on this project?
Some special crystals are a natural inclusion in any setting that includes magic, and ours is not exception, as the caves you'll be traversing are absolutely covered in them!
This one is still unfinished, as the lighting is yet to be sorted, but please do appreciate the model for what is likely the most important object in Sunless Sky. What is it? Well, wouldn't be any fun if we spoiled it.
How about a look at the cave you'll fall into at first? This is the start of your journey, after all, it deserves a special environment.
We have some more things up our sleeve but we believe we've kept you all for long enough now. We'll hopefully see you all next week, but in the meantime be sure to follow our twitter!
