REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM News

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

Hello, fellow Survivors.

Last week, we talked about our original intentions for the monsters at the core of our game, and how the concept of "Plague-ridden Corpses" came about from a narrative and art perspective.

However, as you'll see in the current Early Access version, the narrative and art concepts for these Infested have once again undergone major changes, and today we're going to show you how and why.


[h3]Third Setting: The Journey of a Knight who Vowed to Reclaim a “Holy Relic”[/h3]
I mentioned earlier that we wanted to give the characters a sense of purpose, and that this led us to the idea of a pilgrim's journey to the Holy Land.

The idea of traveling to a specific location in an apocalyptic situation is a trope that's been borrowed heavily from zombie media, most notably Death Road to Canada, and we thought that if we could create a sort of "Medieval Road Movie" type of setting, we could create a pretty unique narrative experience.



After making the initial stages of that version, we also worked on a rough trailer to show at exhibitions and such. At that time, the title of our game was "Before the Dawn".

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

However, as we started to flesh it out, we started to get feedback that the experience was a little more bland than we hoped.

We had a long discussion about why it wasn't feeling as emotionally engaging as we initially thought and came to the conclusion that unlike real-time survival games, the stage-based, turn-based tactical genre expects more meaningful objectives to be presented "on every stage".

Whereas in survival games, where things keep changing over time even if you remain still, the environment itself keeps you on your toes without the need for a strong “scripted” crisis.
In turn-based tactics, where you experience each stage in isolation, the experience becomes more repetitive when you feel like, “The enemies change over the course of three stages, but all I'm doing is the same thing: gathering supplies and staying alive.”

To create a little more intrigue in the characters' journey, we came up with the idea of giving them an intermediate goal to collect something a little more “special” along the way to the final ending.

In keeping with the “Medieval” and “Holy Land” themes, we decided to create a “Holy Relic” that would be the only thing in the game with “Supernatural” powers.



At this point, we were implementing the Choice system for expressing humanity that we shared in the previous archive, so we needed a “Protagonist character" who would be the "Agent of Choice".

So naturally, the whole narrative went from being a “road movie of ordinary medieval people” to a “journey of a knight sworn to recover a holy relic.” We wanted to tell the story of a knight in an apocalyptic situation who has to retrieve a holy relic, meeting various companions and facing various dilemmas along the way.

The knight would later become the inspiration for the main character "Willam" in the Early Access version.


[h3]Fourth Setting: Remore Struggles Against a “Medieval Unknown Species”[/h3]
We've talked about this in past Archive posts, as we realized that the cost of implementing an options system was much higher than expected and decided to focus on tactics.

This decision naturally had a huge impact on the narrative foundation. Because whereas in previous versions, "Combat" was a sort of narrative "Means of Survival" and secondary to the overall gameplay experience, in this fourth version it is now the core of the game.

Previously, only the "Protagonist" had a "Combat-specific" class called "Knight" to serve the narrative goal of the vow and to give them more differentiated combat abilities, while other characters were “Generic Medievalists" such as "Monk/Nun," but in the new direction, each class needed to have unique combat abilities...

This led to a design concept for the starting classes that would give the traditional Knight a One-handed weapon specialization with a Shield, the Outsider a powerful damage dealer with a Two-handed weapon, and the Militia a support attack role who used a Spear or Bow.



There was also a need to make the end goal of the game more “Active.” This was because the previous version was a kind of "Storytelling Survival Game" that used turn-based tactics, but the new direction was focused on "Combat" and "Killing Enemies.”

In fact, it wasn't as easy as we thought it would be to come up with a "clean, satisfying ending that the player can choose," while still maintaining the feel of a "Zombie Movie", because we felt that in a world where most people have already been turned into zombies, it doesn't feel natural to have the world go back to normal because you did something, unless there's some sort of convincing setup.

So, it seems that in a lot of zombie-centric narratives, the "Main Antagonists" of the story turn out to be the humans themselves. Whether it's a leader of a group of survivors who takes advantage of an apocalyptic situation to oppress people, or a villain who unleashes his inner psycho he's been hiding when times were good, it's often a "specific group of humans" that drives the story.

The Cultist group we revealed in Early Access was designed to be just that: a group that was "discriminated against by the people of Remore and now taking advantage of the situation for a chance at revenge," with evidence of their brutal "Rituals" to create a sense of crisis and pose a threat to the player base...



However, setting the Cultists as the "Arch-enemy" of the entire game felt out of place - they were good enough as "Supporting Villains" to add variety to the overall experience, but if they were going to be the end goal of the game, they needed to have some sort of appeal or intensity to them.

We believe that creating compelling villains is just as difficult as creating compelling protagonists, if not more so, and we were concerned the cost of narrative expression needed to achieve what we had in mind would be too much, given our "Tactics-focused" direction.

The idea was, "Since this is a game where the creatures are the primary enemies, why not create a new creature setting that doesn't necessarily have to be tied to the zombie sensibility, but could be big enough to be the final boss?"

It doesn't make sense for monsters to have their own intelligence or goals when they're still "Zombies," so a story that says, "You defeated the final boss zombie, and the world went back to normal" feels awkward and forced.

But if there is a separate species of monsters that are not “Zombies” but somethings capable of a kind of “Volition,” and they are “Turning” the humans of Remore into monsters, then it seemed that it would naturally lead to the conclusion that by killing them, we could at least prevent the apocalypse from getting any worse.

However, we felt that it would be good to have an entity that was “Different from Humans” and felt threatening, that couldn't communicate directly with humans, but could still have its own “Rules of Engagement,” so we came up with the idea of an “Insect” concept, an unknown species, focusing on the swarming behavior of ants/bees/etc. We jokingly and half-seriously said, "This is going to be like medieval XCOM...".



If you've been paying close attention to the dialog following Alldris' rescue in the monastery, you'll recall that he mentions something called "Land Eaters" after fleeing the capital city of Broken Rock. These are the ones that must be "Finally Defeated," an insect-like unknown species.



This unknown species emerged through a "Tear" in the sky - the one that "suddenly opened up one day," as the intro suggests - to make the land of Remore habitable for themselves, and they would capture the Remore people and turn them into "Cocoons”. The idea was that these cocoons would hatch and become "Infested" - insect-human fusions like the Knawer, Blister and Skulker.



To express this “Insect-human Fusion” concept, a sort of upper-layer skin texture was adopted, and a design adopted that would maintain the overall human “Body Shape” but express insect features, mainly in the jaw area.



This is how the narrative and art of the "Infested" you see in the Early Access version came to be.

However, as it turned out, this direction would have its own problems! So, along with the current big gameplay changes the narrative concept itself is undergoing its own transformation!

We’ll explain the next step of the concept change in a future post but next week, we’d like to give a little insight into our narrative representation of the Middle Ages, since we have yet to set the stage for our current keywords "Medieval" and "Monsters".

Thank you for sticking with us, and a special big thank you to those of you who commented on our last post for being so supportive!

We feel it is imperative to share our progress and intention in this way as we're about to make some big changes after a long period of no live updates since releasing the game in Early Access, but seeing the players' reactions is very motivating (Because we feel ultimately that these changes are for the benefit of the player!) :)

We'll be posting tirelessly until we can implement and showcase this new direction!

As always, thank you so much!
REMORE

Hello Survivors,

First, we would like to begin by thanking you all for your continued support of REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM during its Early Access. Your valued feedback gave us much direction and inspiration during this important phase of our development.

As mentioned in our previous Dev Notes, BIG changes are on the horizon for REMORE and it was only achievable by your amazing inputs on the current state of the game and our future visions. For this, we would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

So secondly as a means to show you our appreciation, we decided we wanted to somehow add you, our amazing Survivors, to our Development History!

Of course, since we are gamers, we also wanted to make this an exciting in-game experience as well!
Introducing the REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM Seeking Legendary Survivors Event!
Partake in these events for a chance to have your name written in our Full Release Credits!

We hope you enjoy these series of events while we are busy deep in our development dungeon, cooking up something amazing for you all! Thank you once again for your love and support!

Do you have what it takes to become a Legend? To have your name etched into the annals of Remore history? 
We are seeking Legendary Survivors that have traversed Remore and are capable of pulling off amazing feats.
This time we seek... a Survivor with the Maximum Kills in One Turn!

The Legendary Survivor who Achieves the Highest Number of Kills in One Turn Anywhere in Remore will be Crowned, Maximum Kill and will have their Name proclaimed in the Credits of REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM!
Show us your big brain moves!

Become a Legend, Become History!

[Event Period]
Feb 27 ~ Mar 12 (PT)

[Winner Announcement]
Mar 19

[Submission Form]
https://forms.gle/NAAn1wum8RRwFwwg6


[Event Details]
Kill as many enemies as possible within one turn (player turn)

[How to Participate Event]

1. Record a video of killing as many enemies as possible within one turn (player turn).
   
   
2. Upload the recorded video to a server where it can be viewed and downloadable (Youtube, Google Drive, etc.).
   
   
3. Fill out event submission form (https://forms.gle/NAAn1wum8RRwFwwg6).
   
   
4. Check that there are no missing or corrected parts in the application and submit it.
   

[Rules]

1. Please ensure your Video Link is correct. Any issues with the Video Link may cause your application to be void. 
   
   
2. If you edit the Video in any way to "deceive" the rules, your application may be considered Void.
   
   • You may include an Intro and Outro in your Video, but Gameplay Footage of the Event Requirements cannot be altered in any way.
     
    
   
3. The video should start from the part where you run the saved file. (to check your difficulty)
   
   
4. Only Kills during 1 Turn(Players Turn) will count.
   
   • If enemy dies on enemy turn, it will not count.
     
5. Enemy Movement during your Turn will still be considered as your Turn.
   
   
6. If the number of kills is the same, the winner will be selected in the following order.
   
   • Difficulty > Map > Reduced HP
     
7. In an event of a tie, Winner will be chosen by Development Staff.
   

Thank you,
REMORE

Hello once again, Survivors!

Today we’re going to get back to talking about the narrative.

About a month ago, we wrote an archive post called "Striving for Humanity," in which we talked about what we were trying to achieve with the game's narrative and the challenges we faced along the way.

Now, as we prepare for the road ahead, we're about to undergo another major upheaval in the way we present our narrative.

So, to do that, we like to share our thoughts and interpretation of the game's central narrative keyword, "Medieval Monster Apocalypse.”

We'll start by talking about the "Creature Apocalypse" that we've been building around the "Zombie" motif.


[h3]Combining “Turn-based Strategy” and “Zombie Apocalypse”[/h3]
Zombies have always been a popular theme in games, and each one has a slightly different interpretation: The <Resident Evil> series uses detailed atmospheric depictions to create psychological horror, <They are Billions> is characterized by the sheer number of zombies that are constantly coming after you, and <Project Zomboid> is centered around the “Environment" itself in a zombie apocalypse.

While trying to create a new zombie type enemy in this setting it’s natural to think, how can we bring some uniqueness to the table here?

Our initial inspiration came from Zombicide, which we found appealing because of the emotion of accomplishing objectives and escaping against a constant stream of zombies through tactical play, involving sight/noise, route design, and combat.

While the tactical choice of killing is a valid one, we saw the challenge of "at what point should you fight and at what point should you avoid combat" as a unique selling point because the end goal is to escape, as the zombies are far more numerous than the players can possibly kill.

In addition, we felt that the scavenging element of the game, where you open the doors of abandoned houses potentially revealing zombies, and only being able to get the supplies you need by scavenging these dangerous places was a good fit for the theme.



If you break these points down into keywords, they can be summarized as [Numerous enemies that are hard to wipe out], [Combat that is optional], and [Scavenging for supplies indoors]. We've already talked a lot in the dev notes about how we've been building things like the "Sight/Noise", "Alarm", and "Chase" systems to bring these elements to life...

However, the question of what and who these “Zombies” should be was another issue.


[h3]First "Zombie" setting: "People who died in the Black Death.”[/h3]
Initially, we prioritized the gameplay features of a strategy game rather than giving the zombies themselves a strong narrative or setting, such as having a top-down view of the terrain and keeping the characters as small as possible for a perceivable "mass" feel.

So, with just the general idea that people who died in the Black Death were reanimated, we worked quickly to create the game as seen below, with the corpses dressed in medieval peasant’s clothing, showing how the disease had deformed their bodies - abscesses, black coloration, rotting tissue.



While this version worked for the tactical gameplay we were going for, there were a few things we didn't like.

The biggest issue was that the characters and enemies were too "cute" for the atmosphere we wanted. This was a choice based around visibility and the ability to distinguish a large number of units. If we were going for a light hack-and-slash zombie mood, it would have been a good match.



However, as we started thinking about building a more serious narrative with "Humanity" as a keyword mentioned in the previous post, we realized that it would be impossible to achieve in this direction.



The zombies did have a deformed feel to them which was good, but the characters had to wear masks or helmets because we felt if their eyes or faces were visible it diminished the mood.



However, it was difficult to represent a wide variety of characters in this form, and it was also challenging to justify why all the survivors are wearing masks.



Also, unlike the board game Zombicide, which was focused on playing one-shots, we knew that if we wanted to create a campaign experience that lasted over the timeframe we were aiming for, we needed "Character Purpose" - a narrative plot. Where are these characters going? What are they doing? What are they trying to do with the resources they've collected on the map?

To accomplish these requirements within the "Medieval" theme, we reworked the narrative to be one where players are "Escaping the Black Death by fleeing to the Holy Land.”


[h3]Second Setting: Pilgrims' Escape to the Holy Land[/h3]
In some cases, during the actual Black Death outbreaks of the Middle Ages, there are accounts of people who believed they could escape the plague by reaching some sort of sacred place, such as a "Cathedral" or "Holy Place," in order to survive the scourge.

With this in mind, the idea was to create a narrative of a pilgrimage of sorts, where ordinary medieval people faced the unthinkable and believed that they could be saved by reaching the Holy Land...

Gathering resources on the map is about survival along the way, and constantly gathering weapons/food/medicine/etc. is the only way to persevere in a world overrun by monsters.

As for the artwork, it took a lot of research and trial and error with reference games with similar ratios and perspectives to come up with a specification that would "get as close as possible to the mood we wanted" while still allowing for a large number of enemies on screen.

We gathered the resulting real-world game resources and created the concept art below, which was released on Reddit around November 2020. (Original Post Link)



Thankfully, we received a lot of positive responses and it's been an important source of motivation for us throughout development.

Based on this reaction, we assumed that the theme and presentation of the game was validated, and we only needed to complete the content and systems needed for actual gameplay.

Of course, it wasn't easy, and we've already talked about the process of changing the focus of the gameplay in two archive posts (#1, #2).

Eventually, however, the underlying "Creatures" changed along with the gameplay, and we're looking forward to sharing the story of how the Pestilent, plague-ridden corpses, became Infested, the current Early Access version of the creatures, in a coming post.

As I was writing this post, I realized that it’s essentially the narrative/art perspective of the first archive post that we shared. Looking back, it seems like we’ve been through so many changes and reworks to reach the place we’re at now!

As a developer it’s always difficult to let go of an idea that you’ve worked so hard on and start over, but when you know wholeheartedly the direction you’re heading is the right one, you simply have to trust the process!

Next week, we’ll be back with the story of how the Infested came about!

Until then as always, thanks for reading!
REMORE