[WIP] The Long Way Home - Story-Driven Action/Adventure

Hey everyone!

So, I've been a software engineer for over 15 years now, and decided about a year ago to get into game development, which has always been my dream. I have been working with a friend ever since then on our first game - a story-driven action/adventure game called "The Long Way Home".



The game revolves around a woman named Claire, who has returned to a family cabin at a lake - 8 years after her little brother vanished there under mysterious circumstances - to attempt to piece together the events surrounding his disappearance.



The game is part investigative mystery, part cinematic drama, part survival horror, and part action/adventure. The theme of the game is "Your greatest power comes from your fondest memories", and through means that I will attempt to explain more over time, Claire is able to manifest her thoughts into reality which grants her abilities to fight off "the darkness" - nightmarish entities that pursue her.



We have worked very hard on creating an intricate story that we think will have some emotional heft as well as an interesting message to share. We are creating a cinematic trailer that will be a polished "vertical slice" of the game, and are in the final stages of motion capture. We hope to be starting a Kickstarter soon, which we will use to unveil the trailer and hopefully get some funding to create this experience.



Here is a teaser of the opening shot of the trailer (with no actors, since motion capture is still in progress). We are using Morph3d for our characters - at least for now - as this has helped us to rapidly prototype. Depending on the tools released and our budget, we may actually stick with M3D long term, or we may invest in custom character models.

I'll be updating this thread with more info and media over time - don't wanna give too much away just yet We have a really interesting (I think anyway!) version of a "spellcasting" system that I will be posting more about soon, as well as some WIP gameplay clips. Anyway, thanks for reading this far - and any thoughts or opinions are welcome!

 

Very lovely!

 

I've got to say this looks amazing! Could be a AAA title

 

Thanks so much for the kind words! I'll be posting some updates soon that show how the gameplay works as well as some more screens and videos.

 

So, fast forward eight months and three project upgrades to new Unity point releases without an update to this thread. Shame on me!

We decided to take the "vertical slice" approach, so progress has been slow, but here are a couple of new screens from an area that is currently in progress, if anyone is interested. Gameplay video will be coming soon, with a little luck

 

Progress has been a little slow lately, but I wanted to post a video of our work in progress spellcasting system.

Abilities in The Long Way Home come from invoking glyphs - patterns that you draw in real time that grant offensive, defensive, and utility effects. There isn't "magic" per se in this world, but the ability to harness these powers plays a central role to the story and gameplay.

 

Glyph construction looks interesting, especially the cinematic camera treatment when the 'magic' is released. Nice work.

Did you remodel the character? She looks different compared to previous images above.

 

What is a "vertical slice approach" ?

 

Hey, thanks for taking a look and for the compliment. You are right - that is a different model. We were using Morph3D when those shots were made, but had to drop it since at the time it didn't seem to be headed anywhere

Basically, it means creating a small cross section of the game that is close to the full, final, polished experience as we can get. The team that made Firewatch did the same thing, where they created the entire Day 1 of the game over a 15 month period, before moving on to the rest of the content.

 

Really liking the look of this. You have some great looking assets in there. What are you using for modelling and materials?

Keep up the good work,

 

Thanks for the kind words! We are a two man team (a programmer and a writer/sound engineer), so neither of us are true "artists. Because of that, we are making heavy use of third party assets.

We do try hard to make sure everything fits the visual style though, and make tweaks where necessary. Also, if we are using an assetstore model, we try to use it in a unique or interesting way. We actually don't use much of anything just "out of the box", and try to really make it our own.

Really appreciate you taking a look, thanks again!