Ogu and the Secret Forest News

[Dev Journal 3] Conceptualizing and Planning of the Desert Region

Early look at how we created the Desert region.

Hello! ːsteamhappyː

Today, we’ll have a look at the conceptualization and the art of the dangerous and barren Desert area.







[h2]Atmosphere[/h2]

Unlike the Jungle and the Moon Forest, the Desert area has much less puzzle element but has it’s main focus towards combat and pathfinding scenarios.

To represent its barren theme, the object design is much bigger than our main protagonist Baby Ogu.

Also unlike the other regions where the main route is guided with roads, the Desert region is big and has no road for guidance.

▼Concept Art




▼In-Game Representation






[h2]Caves[/h2]

The Desert region is the homeland for the intelligent ancient Shrews.
However, one day when the piece of the God fell to the ground, it corrupted the native organisms. This caused the feral animals and the cacti monsters to emerge and became a threat to the native Shrews.

The Shrews then had to escape underground so that they could hide from the Cactus monsters that were keen to devour them.




* These scenes are blurred to avoid spoilers.





You, the player, need to utilise your sense of direction with the help of the ancient Shrew technology to find your way to your destination.

[h2]Mecha Shrew DDAT-G 5000[/h2]

To design the Desert region as a more dynamic and interesting blood-boiling area, we wanted to include something that is unique to this region.

This is why we included the giant monsters that are dozens of times bigger than our Baby Ogu. To combat this, we introduced the ‘Mecha Shrew DDAT-G 5000’





The ‘Mecha Shrew DDAT-G 5000’ is under construction within the ‘Shrew Village’ underground. To finish it’s construction they need the help of our hero Baby Ogu.

They say they need some key materials to finish its construction and Baby Ogu can help them find these materials through fighting the cactus monsters above the ground.



Play the game to find out more about what’s going on in the Desert region!
Thank you!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hi, all! ːsteamhappyː
The release date of 'Ogu and the Secret Forest' has been confirmed.


[h2]23 March 6:00 p.m(PST)[/h2]


We continue to develop our build based on your feedback and opinions gathered through demos, gameshows, and CBT. Your anticipation and encouraging cheers give us the massive power to carry on.

Please stay tuned until the release date!

Hello! ːsteamhappyː

Today, we’ll have a look at the early concept art at the dark, mysterious and beautiful ‘Moon Forest’





[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


The ‘Moon Forest’ is located in the northern area of the world. There are various puzzles in this region and you can also collect a variety of ores using the smelter.


[h2]Strange Vegetations[/h2]

Unlike the ‘Jungle’ region where the ever shining Sun is its main motif, The ‘Moon Forest’ has a main motif of the subtle glow of the Moon.
This led us to create a dark and calm atmosphere throughout this region. This is why the vegetation in this area has a colorfully glowing nature.

[h3]Concept Art[/h3]











[h2]Ethnic Traditions[/h2]

The ‘Moon Forest’ is home to a variety of bug villagers. We did not want the bug people to live in naturalistic simple architecture. We wanted it to represent some culture they might have.

This is the reason why we chose to have the traditional building architecture of Korea. We hoped that this would give the bug people some backstory of their culture. These styles of buildings are rarely found in adventure games and we hoped that it would be a unique feature of our world.







[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]





Next, we’ll have a look at the ‘Desert’ region.
Thank you!

Hello! ːsteamhappyː

Today we’ll introduce you to the starting area of the game. This is how we started the creation of the ‘Jungle Region’.



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


The north east area of the world is the Jungle region. This area is divided in two which includes the Starting Area, where you start your journey, and the Jungle Outskirt where the story builds up.


Since this is where we make the first impression of the game, we wanted to create an area where it is full of visual interests along with some fairly simple puzzles and combat scenarios that will introduce the players to the gameplay.

[h2]Waterfall of the Meditating Monkey[/h2]


The Village of the Sun’s residents, the monkeys, have a deep respect towards nature and are living in harmony with it. Also they always train their minds for peace and clarity by meditation.
You can occasionally encounter these meditating monkeys at the Waterfall in front of the village.

[h2]Temple of the Sun[/h2]



At the ‘Temple of the Sun’ lies the ‘Sigil of the Sun’. One of the 6 broken pieces of the world.
The monkeys are waiting for the chosen one from their folklore to arrive and bring harmony back to the world. They have found one of the broken pieces and are keeping it safe for the rightful hero’s arrival.

To visually represent these thematic concepts, we’ve tried to incorporate the architectural style of the ancient magnificent and mysterious ‘Angkor Wat’ as a reference.



‘The Temple of the Sun’ is the first dungeon that the player will come across. We’ve tried to represent the classic adventure-game style dungeon that we all love. It also introduces to the players the hints of core mechanics of puzzles and combat. We designed the dungeon so that it represents few of the core gameplay mechanics.

Before, the dungeon only contained puzzles until you encountered the boss. However, we thought that this wasn’t enough of a representation of our game play. This is why we redesigned the dungeon so that it has more combat scenarios including the ‘Monkey Sentinel’ fight.

[h2]Village of the Sun[/h2]





‘Village of the Sun’ is the first town that you’ll come across adventuring in the vast world of secret forest. This is the biggest map so far out of approximately 200 maps that exist in the game right now. There are various NPCs including Merchants, Quests and information givers, Fishing tutorial guy and also people that just wanna have a little chat with our protagonist ‘Baby Ogu’. There is also another important aspect to this town. The ‘Hero’s House’.

[h2]Hero’s House[/h2]



Early design of the ‘Hero’s House’ was a simple area where you can visit throughout the adventure to replenish various expendables and maybe harvest some crops and upgrade some gears. However, since we created more interactable objects including hotspring, upgrade station, cooking campfire and chairs just to name a few, we wanted the ‘Hero’s House’ to be able to be customized to the player’s liking. This is why we implemented the housing system.





Housing system was developed and implemented during the 3rd closed beta test and still is under construction to be refined. We’re currently developing more furniture and objects so that you can have a unique home. Until early access, we’ll implement as much as we can.

Next, we’ll talk about the ‘Moon Forest’.
See you soon!

Hello! ːsteamhappyː

First of all, we welcome with a warm heart to all the people waiting for the game and all of you that came through the steam nextfest! This is ‘Ogu and the Secret Forest’.

We’re currently working on the build for launching the early access in March. We can’t share many details yet. So instead, for the people that are wondering how ‘Ogu and the Secret Forest’ came about, we wanted to share some thought processes that’s been considered before all this journey started. A little glimpse at the mind of developers if you will. Hope you like it!

[h2]The World Building and the Structure of the Game[/h2]






‘Ogu and the Secret Forest’ has always had a main theme of an adventure of a child who is very curious and pure.

‘Baby Ogu’ the main protagonist who is a ‘selfless curious platypus venturing into a new unknown world guided by a mysterious powerful being’ was our starting point. To create a story around this theme, we drew a lot of motifs from the famous ‘Alice in wonderland’, Studio Ghibli's ‘Spirited away’ and ‘My neighbour Totoro’.









We didn’t want the path to be linear so that the player may choose their own way of progression. This is why we decided to create a world with several differently themed regions and let the players choose which region they may want to visit. It is because of this reason we’ve decided to create the ‘Go find the Sigils’ system.

Due to the lack of development manpower with only 4 people in the whole project, of course creating something that is completely nonlinear is without a doubt a great challenge.
However, until the complete official release we’ll try our best to create something that is as unique of an experience as it can be for every other player. That is our goal.


[h2]Character Concept[/h2]




Every character design and animation has been hand drawn by the original artist ‘Jong-Beom Moon’ of the ‘Moonlab Studio’. Since the artist has a liking towards animals and bugs, you may find the unique yet somewhat familiar style of the artwork quite charming.








In the current demo version you can meet our hero ‘Baby Ogu’ and the monkeys of the ‘Village of the Sun’. However, We assure you there are a variety of animal friends such as birds, shrews, insects, hippo and many more that are eager to meet you as well!

That’s it for now! We’ll tell you more about our journey with the creation process of ‘Jungle region’, ‘Moon Forest’, ‘Desert region’ and so on. Thank you and see you again!