REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM News

A warm greeting once again Survivors!

About two months ago, we introduced our Experimental Process for creating procedural maps.

We've been prototyping ever since, of course, but we generally mix up the topic of our posts to keep things interesting for you readers...

If you've been following along, you've got a good idea of where we’re headed now, from the “Surprised/surrounded” combat system we introduced, to the original intent and current direction of the narrative...

This week, we’re going back to talking about Maps, and want to show you how we experimented with a base environment for creating “Procedural Maps.”


[h3]Experimenting with "Room" Based Representations[/h3]
In our last post on procedural maps, we mentioned that we were experimenting with randomized rule generation, but after discussions with the art team, we started redesigning with the goal of creating indoor maps where specific places like “living rooms” etc could be more accurately expressed.

We needed a level design that would allow this “better representation of indoor areas” to work with the new “Surprise/surround” mechanic, while also aligning with the narrative requirement that players can gather “Memories of the Dead” through “Embers.”



As such, our first experiment in creating new maps was designed with the following goals in mind.

• Design a room with a specific theme, such as a Hunter's House or a Forge, following suggested room rules.
  
  • Enable drops that match the theme, such as Throwing Daggers (Hunter's House) or Equipment Repair Tools (Forge).
• Place a variety of obstacles in small spaces, allowing for the "Surrounded" mechanic to be used well.
  
  
• ● Deploying Special Enemies/objects that carry an "Ember Shard," and allow them to have an Area Effect on all Enemies/allies, significantly altering the play of each map.
  
  • For example, if you have a special object that has the effect of "increasing your 1-hit critical strike chance by 50% each turn," your ability to "kill enemies in one hit" is enhanced on that map.
    
  • Conversely, if you have a special object that has the effect of “reducing enemy/allied vision by 1 space”, it will narrow your allies' vision, but also narrow the enemy's vision, enhancing “Surprise” play.

The test results for this map were positive, especially since the playstyle was significantly different depending on the type of Ember Shard, so we knew that creating multiple types of objects with special effects and making them appear randomly across the map would greatly diversify the experience.

However, there was some concern about whether this would be enough to continue to deliver a diverse experience.

First, since the size of the space itself was pretty small, we figured there was a good chance that the experience would be similar, albeit with small variations due to randomness.

We realized that while the differences in enemies and special objects could provide a slightly different experience, it would be difficult to maintain this considering the amount of maps we aim to make.

We received a lot of feedback that the hallway spaces felt cramped when it was just a single space, and when we increased it to two or three spaces, it was difficult to distinguish the size of the actual rooms from that of the hallways.



As we were discussing solutions to these issues, the idea came up, "Wouldn't it be more fun to have the stage be outdoor-centric?"


[h3]Experimenting with "Outdoors" Based Representations[/h3]
The board game Zombicide, which we've mentioned as a reference several times, has a play scenario where you move down large streets, stopping at buildings you need to visit to complete the mission before escaping.

We thought that it might be better to have "multiple buildings" to wander around instead of "one big building" to capture the "apocalyptic feel" and create an experience closer to the initial theme.

In this case, the basis for procedural generation would be to generate and place multiple building modules...



For the new maps, unlike the solely indoor ones, we made the following changes.

• Create streets instead of a single "corridor" and have each building be separated by these streets.
  
  
• The streets are patrolled by roaming enemy types, whose alarm range is two to three times that of normal enemies.
  
  • Instead, they have lower HP and are easier to kill, especially using “Surprise.”
• Each building has a "window" that allows you to check out enemy placement before entering the building.

The main intention was to create a more "exploring the space against unseen threats" experience. We assumed that this would be a level design direction that would be more in line with the FOG OF WAR system and scavenging content in existing games.



First of all, the reaction to the new content like “windows” and “roamers” was very positive. It was already a game where “vision” was important, but ultimately it felt underutilized outside of whether or not to set off an enemy alarm, and now it felt much more used in pre-combat situations.

(Of course, the window in the current example image is a dummy resource! Creating a new element called a "window" for gameplay would be quite expensive, so the plan was to first validate the gameplay implications with a dummy resource before creating it.)

The presence of Roamer creatures roaming the streets also adds tension and makes it clear that you need to take advantage of the new “Surprised" system; if you end your turn on the streets and are spotted by a Roamer, you'll be greeted by a massive wave of enemies, giving you a stronger reason to carefully enter the buildings.



However, despite very good first impressions with windows and Roamers, we received a lot of feedback that it would be impossible to use this map as a "Standard Map".

Initially, it was nice to have the feeling of “exploring the map,” but the playtime was too long and player fatigue was too high. We were concerned that “if the Dev team, who are already familiar with the game, felt this, wouldn't it be worse for new players?”

Our game doesn’t have separate "Movement and Combat" parts like Darkest Dungeon, but instead requires you to spend TP in every movement situation and to keep track of your characters' positions and vision, so while the "exploration" element definitely works well, we felt it was too fatiguing to play for a long time.

Also, the difficulty of combat itself outside of movement/exploration felt overly long and tiring, as the enemies you fought in the previous "small maps" still had the same health scaling.

We were faced with the decision of whether to further experiment with the outdoor maps to address their weaknesses while retaining their strengths, such as windows/roamers, or to revert back to the more "tried and true" indoor maps.

Since then, we've experimented quite a bit, so we’ll share all the outcomes in a post soon!

Last week, we said we would introduce the "Character System" and its relation to the Embers, but since that part of the game is still in development, we didn’t want to jump the gun. The maps and combat system are at a point where most of the development and decision-making has been completed, so we're going to introduce them first, and then work our way through the details.

As always, thanks for sticking with us and we’ll see you again next week!
REMORE

Hello again, Survivors.

In our last Dev Note, we said we'd be introducing the new narrative tone for our game.

So, this week, our Scribe who is working hard on the narrative framework is taking over Dev Note duties to guide you through this introduction!

Last time, we mentioned that the central theme of the narrative is "the desperate struggle of humans against creatures, as they inherit the knowledge and experience of the dead." Today, I'd like to talk about the process of finding the main material to convey this theme, and how we went about choosing it.


[h3]Exploring the Primary Source Material to Represent the Theme: “Olympic Torch”[/h3]
To find the right subject matter for the aforementioned theme, we looked at a number of stories.

The first inspiration was the Olympic Torch.



If you’ve ever watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, you saw the flame being passed from hand to hand, for all to see.

Watching this, you can feel the passion and hard work of those who came before was being passed on, a culture started long ago, and that the games being played under that flame were being made ever better by this relaying of experience and knowledge.

This really aligned with the "passing on people's knowledge and experience" part of what we wanted to convey in our game.

We wanted to create an experience within Remore, where someone's hard work and experience is passed on to others, and to show how a difficult journey can be eased by multiple hands.


[h3]Exploration of Primary Material to Represent the Theme: “The Fire of Prometheus”[/h3]


The next material of inspiration was "Prometheus' Fire".

Many of you will already know the tale, but here's a quick refresher.

Once upon a time, one brother of a pair of Titans was tasked with creating and populating the world with creatures. One by one, he gave each animal a gift, sharp claws, warm fur, or wings to fly. But he gave them so freely that when it was man’s turn, he had no more gifts to give.

The story goes that his brother, feeling sorry, gave them the flame that belonged to the gods, so that they could develop.

With this gift, humans were able to build and keep fires to chase away the cold and darkness and use it to create their own claws and scales which they didn't have, so that they could stand against the other creatures.

In this way, fire was the most "Human" of the gifts.


[h3]The Final Ingredient to Unleash the Flames in Our Game: Ember[/h3]
We thought that the above ideas of the “Olympic Torch” and “Prometheus' Fire” were great ways to illustrate how people pass on knowledge and experience.

But a “Flame” is without physical substance, so it's hard for someone to own it or represent it in any conceptual way.

That's how we came to the idea of the “Ember.”



An Ember is the last tiny breath of life in a dying flame, but it has the potential to reignite into a giant flame at any moment.

In many ways it is similar to human life.

When there are wars, plagues, and catastrophes consuming the world, when so many things are being destroyed and falling apart, when it seems like there's no hope at all, all it takes is an Ember to reignite the flame of humanity.

In the midst of it all, people continue to rebuild their lives by stoking these small fires. They build fires to feed their hungry stomachs, they nurture the flames with what little they have, hammering and gluing metal together to rebuild, and in time, their efforts will return the world to the way it was before the disaster struck.


[h3]How We’re Approaching this in Game[/h3]


These are still just ideas. We certainly don’t want the Olympic Torch Relay in Remore, or an appearance from Prometheus himself, but we want to convey the feel and emotion of those things to the people who play our game.

So, we named Remore's new core system the "Ember" and it has a number of abilities to convey a similar feeling.

An Ember is a mystical object that sparkles like a jewel and seems to have a flame within it.

This object transmits the memories and experiences of those who have died to the one who now holds it, just as the torch, passed from hand to hand, transmitted the stories and efforts of many.

Like the fire of Prometheus, the Ember provides the survivors of Remore with a way to sustain their lives, and heat to refine and equip them with gear they can rely on in the arduous fight against the creatures.

The Ember, like its namesake, starts out small and faint, growing as Survivors find other Embers to strengthen its power, but eventually becomes the key to solving the dark scourge that envelops Remore.


[h3]To Conclude the Introduction[/h3]
These are the main ideas we wanted to communicate to you!

There are still a lot of things we're working on, and we won’t spoil things too much. We want you to experience it for yourself when it's ready.

So, this week, we've focused less on the actual systems more on the narrative concept of the Ember and the experience and emotions we want to deliver.

Next week, we'll talk about how these Embers aren't just a narrative device, but how they tie into the game's character progression system, how they’re connected and how we’re making the game rules surrounding them fun.

Until next time!
REMORE

Hello Survivors,

The REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM Maximum Kill Event has ended! ​

The Community submitted lots of entries to the event, and we have spent the past week combing through every single one of them in awe of your collective talent. We’ve been blown away by your passion, creativity, and deep appreciation for all things. We're excited to present the Maximum Kill Event winner! ​

[Winner]​
[h3]꿀맛[/h3]

• Kills: 11
  
• Map: Tavern
  
• Difficulty: Despair
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[Note]​

1. The content involved in the winning works are derivative works of the players, and does not represent the actual plot and settings in the game.​
   
   
2. The reward will be implemented sometime after the Event Ends and before the Official Launch. We ask for your patience and understanding on this matter.​
   

Congratulations to Winner of the Competition! ​
Aside from the winner carefully selected. The entire Black Anchor Studio meticulously examined every submission. We were incredibly touched by the participants’ love and passion for REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM.

Once again, a huge thank you to everyone who participated! ​

Thank you,
REMORE

Hello again Survivors!

When we decided on the Rework during Early Access, we outlined three big things we wanted to address: More Map Diversity, More Character Diversity, and an Overhaul of the Meta-game System to match.

And as we mentioned in a previous Dev Note, there's been a general shift in the character diversification process towards minimizing scripted "Personal Narrative" and focusing more on gameplay.



We're currently in the process of play-testing 8 Characters using dummy resources (all images are subject to change!), and we're not yet sure how many characters we'll end up with, or specific skillsets, etc.

But before we talk about these new Character System/Content Design directions and experiments, we need to talk about the narrative changes associated with this character diversification.

So today, we'd like to share some of the core intentions and thought processes behind our rebuilt narrative with a focus on character diversity.


[h3]Choosing the Narrative Focal Point: “The Desperate Struggle of Humanity”[/h3]
In our "Archives" post, we introduced the keywords we wanted to bring to life through our narrative: "Humanity," "Creature Apocalypse," and "Medieval" were key.

At the time when we needed to rebuild our narrative once again due to a shift in character design, we established the following principles to avoid repeating our previous trial and error.

• Don't try to use multiple keywords, choose one keyword/sentence to "Reinforce" the feeling.
  
• The chosen keywords/sentences should align with the core gameplay mechanics (Strategy/Tactics).
  

With that in mind, we went back to the core of the experience we wanted to convey by choosing a "Creature Apocalypse" to create a tactical stage-centric Tactics RPG.

As a result of that thinking, we decided that it was most important for combat to make the player (and characters) feel like they were in the middle of a "Desperate Struggle."

The systematic intent that all enemies have vision and need to be approached with caution, why we think a low-power setting is more appealing to players instead of a hack-and-slash experience with "Overwhelming Power," and how victory in combat can only be achieved by "Deep Thought" can all be tied together through this topic sentence.

We felt that if we could get this direction right, we could create a narrative sensibility that would work well with the Strategy/Tactics of a Tactics RPG, without necessarily trying to extract human conflict/morality or survival game elements like hunger from the keyword "Creature Apocalypse".

This leads us to the following design directions,

• Priority 1 : Conveying the emotion of "Desperate Struggle" through combat systems and content that pit you against creatures.
  
• Priority 2 : The way you win the fight should be based as much as possible on your "Knowledge or Abilities as a Human Being.”
  
• Priority 3 : That "Knowledge or Ability as a Human Being" captures the "Medieval" background theme as much as possible.
  

By setting these Priorities, we've clarified the purpose of each of our Narrative and Content Themes and focused on what we know we can do best.

Below is some concept art that was created as a result of a conversation with our art team about how the keyword "Desperate Struggle" should be represented. What’s your opinion on this? We’d genuinely love to hear!! :)




[h3]Narrative Points: “Inherit the Knowledge and Experience of the Dead”[/h3]
So, we need to find a good way to express the “Desperate Struggle” that is more than just creatures and high combat difficulty! We want an experience that feels much more unique.

The Darkest Dungeon series builds on the established dungeon crawler genre to "shine a light on the psychological fears of adventurers," and creates a unique experience through its signature "Stress/Affliction system" and other game elements.

Meanwhile, titles like Rogue Legacy have become great textbook examples of the "Roguelite" genre, with its unique twist on the "die and you start over" style of the roguelike genre: you carry on the legacy of a previous character.

Our next goal was to ensure that the abstract experience goal of "The Desperate Struggle of Humanity" could be expressed through concrete means, such as the "Stress System" and "Legacy Ssystem" of the games above, and that all elements of the game were consistent with that core experience.

Of course, the process was not easy by any means, but it would be a very long post if I tried to recount all the trials, errors, and discussions, and I relied more on “Inspiration/Ideas” than “Logic/Analysis” in this process, so I'll just share the flow of the conception process as follows.

• First, we assumed that the game's character system would be closest to Darkest Dungeon after the character diversification work.
  • Since a "fully customizable character" approach like Battle Brothers would not work with the current artwork structure,
    
  • We've decided to go the Darkest Dungeon route and have fixed classes, but not fixed characters (randomized names, different traits for different characters within the same class, etc.)
    
• However, there was a lot of debate about whether or not we really wanted to introduce a “Permanent Death” system.
  
  • We decided to move away from the idea of having to restart the game if one character dies in combat, but there are plenty of examples of games where a character who reaches 0 HP just "leaves the battlefield" and doesn't "die permanently".
    
  • While there are many advantages to having a permanent death system to keep the overall theme alive and convey the "weight of choice," the end result is "repetitive tasks that require you to spend time rebuilding your character," unless you change the genre to a completely run-based roguelike.
    
• In the midst of this thinking, the idea of "being able to carry over the knowledge and experience of a deceased character" came up.
  
  • In other words, if the game structure is such that a diverse group of human beings can all be playable characters, rather than a fixed character with a personal narrative, why not pass on the skills, stats, traits, etc. of a previously deceased character to another character? This was the idea.
    
  • Our hypothesis was that this approach would allow us to retain the narrative feel of "permanent death" while compensating for its gameplay shortcomings.
    

The inspiration for this idea was a manga called "G. About the Earth's Movement" (2020-2022 serialized, written by Uoto, published by Shogakukan).

The manga, which follows the struggle of intellectuals to prove the theory of geodynamics against the religious authorities who suppress it as heresy, is a highly original narrative in that it doesn't feature a single protagonist, but rather "a group of human beings risking their own deaths to pass on the knowledge.

I won't go into the details as it would be a spoiler, but if you're interested in this kind of thing, it's worth a read!



From this process, a secondary goal was set: to build on the foundational experience of "humans' desperate struggle against creatures" and feature gameplay that "inherits the knowledge and experience of the dead".

However, in order for this goal to become an actual experience like Darkest Dungeon or Rogue Legacy mentioned above, we needed to plan for more specific systems and mechanics.

We'll share our design direction for this in next week's post.

Unlike the combat system and map design, which were more about "improving" on what was already in place, the character system and the narrative underpinnings associated with it are much more abstract, and I think that's why it's going to be a long explanation.

But we also have a lot of new ideas and interesting things ready to show you so stick around for future Dev Notes when we’ll be sharing them!

Until then, as always, See You Next Week!
REMORE

Greetings, Survivors!

Over the last few weeks, we showed you how our game's main concept, a Creature Apocalypse, went from "plagued corpses rising as zombies" to "insect-human hybrids".

This week, I'd like to talk about how we went about tackling another major pillar of our narrative: the Middle Ages.


[h3]Making a choice: “Wanting to make an uncommon zombie concept.”[/h3]
While the original version of Zombicide that our game is based on is essentially a typical modern zombie setting, the version we were more attracted to was the medieval themed Zombicide: Black Plague.

We've always enjoyed Medieval content like Game of Thrones and Mount & Blade, but beyond that, we knew we wanted to create a fresh take on the idea of Zombies.

The zombie genre is very popular and there are already a lot of games out there, so we thought we needed something to set us apart, and so thought that a medieval setting would give our game a unique angle.

To represent this in-game, we asked ourselves:

• What’s the appeal of a "Medieval" setting and what do we need to represent it effectively?
  
• What would really happen if a zombie apocalypse happened in the Middle Ages instead of modern times?
  
• Which of these elements would work well within the game we’re creating?
  

[h3]Initial Focus: Efforts to Recreate the Middle Ages in Real History[/h3]
Our initial approach to "Medieval" was to try to achieve a level of authenticity that would bring to life the feel of a specific European country around the 14th century, albeit fictionalized, as in Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Mount & Blade.

The idea of a "Zombie Apocalypse" is fascinating to us because the existing social order breaks down and disintegrates under the weight of zombies, and we felt that the appeal of the apocalypse could be conveyed more strongly if it felt like a real historical setting rather than a fantasy world like D&D.

However, as with everything we've shared so far, there were a number of issues that surfaced when we dove in.

One of the things we didn't realize was that the art style we chose, Pixel-Art, is more about capturing the imagination than realism.

The gleaming metal texture of full plate armor on a knight bracing his jousting lance atop a galloping horse... is a typical emotive image when thinking of the "realistically rendered Middle Ages," but it's hard to capture that feeling without a 3D game with realistic depictions.

Furthermore, the top-down perspective we chose for tactical play, while great for situational awareness and gameplay, didn't lend itself to a "realistic feel" - we didn't have the ability to rotate the camera angle or zoom in like the XCOM series, and it would have been prohibitively expensive to make resources completely different in combat than out of combat.

After spending days debating why we needed to represent a mill in order to create a "realistic medieval village" and why it was hard to convey in our current art style, and finding sources and debating whether wine could or could not have been bottled in the Middle Ages, we began to have fundamental doubts about whether this direction was the right one for the core fun of the game.

Unless the game's entire raison d'être is to recreate a realistic medieval world, we thought it better to pivot away from this direction in favor of something that plays more to our strengths.



One plus side to this early focus on realism is that it helped us shape the mood of our content, even though you would have been hard pressed to find potatoes in 14th Century Europe!


[h3]Second focus: Building a low-fantasy worldview centered around Religion[/h3]
In a previous post, we mentioned that the narrative shifted from a “pilgrim's journey to the Holy Land” to a “knight's journey to retrieve a holy relic.”

Whereas “Journey to the Holy Land” focused on "realistic, authentic medieval representation," the revised narrative shifted the focus to what "medieval charms we could capitalize on," and the main focus of that was Religion.

There are a lot of things that symbolize the Middle Ages, such as feudalism, hierarchy, and cold warfare, but I think the idea of "a time when religion ruled" is also a big part of it, and we thought it was much easier to capture that aspect with pixel art than iron and armor, with the statues of saints and other religious symbols used in our Reddit post.

Therefore, we wanted to unify the elements of the entire game around the concept of religion, and through this, reveal the theme of a medieval apocalypse.

• The goal of the game is to recover all seven "holy relics," which are religious symbols.
  
• The protagonist is a knight who has sworn an oath to the church to protect the relics
  
• Protagonist's starting companions are religious figures such as monks and nuns
  
• Human enemy NPCs other than monsters, such as "heretics" and "inquisitors” are present
  
• Represent the conflict between religious doctrine and real-world situations (since there was a choice system back then)
  
• Organize the game's starting location, and the main setting for the search for the relic, as a "church/cathedral/monastery", etc.
  
• Other events, referring to "the changes and trials of religious medieval people's faith in the face of an apocalyptic situation" and their attitudes toward the Black Death at the time.
  

We wanted to give the overall narrative a sense of unity in this way, and I think that if we were able to implement it “accurately”, we would have been able to present a medieval apocalyptic world with its own flavor.

However, as I mentioned in the previous post, the cost of implementing the choice system shifted the overall focus of the game from tactics to storytelling, and we had to completely rethink our narrative plans for the medieval world instead of the monsters.


[h3]Third Focus: A fictional medieval world centered around “Cold Warfare”[/h3]
Since the “religion” element is ultimately a mental element related to people's “beliefs”, we found it difficult to make it work in a game that is more strategy/tactical than narrative-driven.

In fact, I don't think it's an “impossible” goal, as something like Blasphemous borrows heavily from these elements while still delivering a heavily action-oriented experience... but at this point, we'd already changed the narrative so many times that we were afraid to set an “uncertain” goal again.

So, even if religion wasn't necessarily at the center of the narrative, we’d still keep some elements that would be natural in a medieval setting, but the overall thematic focus would be less on "medieval" and more on the threat of the "creature" itself and the individual characters like Willam/Edwin/Duirmuid trying to overcome it (primarily through the use of cold weapons).

As we went about making the Early Access version, the "Medieval" elements were woven into the weapons and tools used in combat, the setting, and the narrative of the characters as a kind of decoration.



Each of these decisions were made for a reason, but in hindsight, the current interpretation and representation of the keyword "Medieval" leaves something to be desired from a developer perspective.

At this point, my main regret is that we've been obsessing over "external" elements like "medieval" as a keyword or "religion" as a keyword, rather than thinking about how to make the game more fun and engaging through this.

With these lessons learned, our new direction for narrative building is to aim for a consistent sense of fun across both gameplay and narrative, and we'll be sharing some of that in posts over the next week or so.

Thank you for your attention to this long tale of the past, and we'll be back next week in the form of a Dev Note where we’ll look at something more directly related to current Dev direction!

See you then!
REMORE