Farewell North News

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[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Restore color to the desolate islands of Farewell North, an open world journey where you play as a collie traveling with his owner. Explore land and sea, uncover hidden paths, evade monsters, and free wildlife to bring color back to the world while revealing an emotional story about saying farewell.

In this devlog you'll see how community feedback is being directly incorporated into the canoeing mechanic, making for a much more polished experience, and new accessibility options to help you enjoy Farewell North the way you'd like to experience it.

On the canoe side, the animations have been greatly improved, though they're still not quite final. The colouring mechanic, where optimally timed paddle strokes bring colour rushing temporarily out of the canoe and increasing movement speed, has been overhauled to be much more visually interesting.

New accessibility options have been added, including the ability to disable all visual aids for those who want a more explorative experience, and the ability to disable the canoe paddle timing requirement for those with motor impairments or who just prefer a more relaxed canoe gameplay.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

https://youtu.be/rlgSzrPHocE

What a month! There's been so much progress on the game, it's hard to condense it down to a 10 minute devlog. First, I've been thinking a lot about the game mechanics and how they fit into puzzle gameplay. I realized that the demo (by the way, you can sign up to be a beta tester over on Discord!) doesn't currently have enough variety and movement in the gameplay, so I've introduced a new mechanic and a few new puzzle pieces to help mix it up.

I also started implementing Photo Mode into the game over on Twitch! It's been a fun project to work on each stream, and something that I think is going to be a nice little bonus feature for the game.

Finally, I've been reworking the jump mechanic and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the new system!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

https://youtu.be/b29ExPgFNpI

In the sixteenth (!) Farewell North devlog, we'll look at some big improvements to the game that have come out of the alpha playtests.

Perspective puzzles have been massively improved to ensure they're understandable for new players, without going so far as to hold the players hand. They should be much more intuitive now, and some playtest footage shows we're on the right track here.

The graphics of the uncoloured world have been significantly improved to ensure texture and shadow detail is still able to come through, and the results are quite substantial.

See for yourself, and let me know what you think!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHEOzCJxgzc

In the eleventh Farewell North devlog, I'll show you how stealth is being integrated into the game!

Since I was a kid I've loved stealth games like Splinter Cell and Hitman, and more recently games like Dishonoured have scratched that itch. There's something about that genre that really just peaks my interest, and since day 1 I've been saying Farewell North would have stealth elements. It took a while to get to this part of the gameplay, but stealth is finally making its way into the game.

I'm still quite adamant that Farewell North won't have any combat mechanics, so it was important to find a way to integrate the stealth into the gameplay in a way that actually fits within the mechanics and themes of the game.

In this devlog I'll show you the main stealth gameplay loop, and explain how I'm thinking about stealth as a whole within the game. I'll also show you some effects I've been working on, and some behind-the-scenes in Unity where I've been working on vision cone that adjusts to the shape of the environment in real time.

Check out the video here, and let me know what you think!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w49kVuda5tk