LORE

The LORE System is an important part of Herodom. It's essentially a means of collecting and tracking useful knowledge and lore about the world around you. It's divided into three main systems: The most basic is the Journal, which logs important factoids about, say, local kings and cities, important historical events, and so on. This has little effect on the game itself and is primarily a means of emphasizing the plot and setting without being intrusive.

Secondly, you have the bestiary. When you obtain the LORE for a given monster/enemy, you get an entry in your bestiary about it, which will give you a little image of them and tell you their name (which will from that point on show up when you fight them, a la Symphony of the Night). Further, you'll get a brief flavor descrpition of the creature, as well as a list of items that can be looted from the creature. Finally, you'll see the stats for the monster (not pictured here) including health, experience, and basic power/defense. This is useful not only in that it's easier to appraise enemy risk and reward, but also because having the lore entry for an enemy will make item drops from that enemy more common. Some rarer drops can't even be scavenged until you have the lore entry (for example, a giant spider's poison gland), simply because without the bestiary entry you'd lack the knowledge of how to retrieve it.
Unlike most games with bestiaries, you don't get the entry just from defeating one of these monsters. You have to learn about them. As such, you'll often get lore entries as quest rewards or through conversation. For example, in one early quest, you find a grimy old monument in a graveyard, too encrusted with dirt to read. All you need is some water to wash it off and you can read about the history of the graveyard's guardians, which gives you the lore entry for the local shambling skeletons.

The third major facet of the Lore system is the recipe book. Like bestiary lore, recipes can be obtained as quest rewards, through conversation, or in any number of other forms. In one of the first quests in the game, a grateful housewife gives you the basics to make flour which becomes a staple ingredient in more complex recipes later on. Used in conjunction with the bestiary, it's easy to find what items you need, where to buy them (or what monsters need to be slaughtered to obtain them), and then put them all together in a nice finished product. Consumable items, weapons, armor, equipment, and even trade goods can be made in this fashion. Recipes are an integral part of the game and are often the only way to get certain items, especially of higher quality. In a pinch, it's good to be able to make some health-recovering items or prepared food when you're stranded in the hostile wilderness, miles from the nearest town.

Dominance

This isn't actually going to be a real project like the others. Rather, it's just a concept I sketched on the spot when asked for "a game concept proposal in five minutes". Later I drew the above mock-up. So again, this won't actually be made, it's just an idea I had some fun with.

"In a pre-medieval fantasy setting, you play as a Tribal Spirit who has been given physical form by his worshippers. Your task is to wipe out the major tribes of the small, bizarre world and assert your dominance by eliminating their guardian spirits and ascending from simple spirit to true Godhood.

The game revolves around the village as a central hub, and a large altar which, over the course of the game, will display trophies taken Predator-style from your demigod victims. Between missions, you can perform a select few side tasks to provide for your tribe, which result in small side bonuses. For example, you could hunt to provide more food for your followers or help in their construction. The bottom line is still the missions, however, so all upgrades will affect this in one way or another (higher max HP, greater speed, new attacks and powers, etc).

The missions, each one designed to take out a specific spirit, are unlocked in tiers, and each target within a tier can be fought in any order. Most levels involve you rampaging through a mostly-helpless village and tearing the shit out of things until you finally invoke the full wrath and manifestation of the tribal guardian, and then it's a big boss fight.
Aesthetic is somewhere between Knytt and Shadow of the Colossus, involving bizarre and stylized locales and wildly-varying tribal guardians."

I'd propose it as something like a melee-combat sidescroller. You fight tiers of bosses, unlock new powers and abilities as well as basic stat increases. Each level is a "FUCK SHIT UP" exercise in pure mayhem that ends with a bizarre and atmospheric boss fight. Side missions would basically just be levels with a slightly different goal and no endboss. Gameplay is simple but fast-paced and full of things getting torn up and broken to bits. Boss fights key.

In the end, I envision sort of a... a close-combat Megaman with the setting variety of Knytt and the boss variety of Shadow of the Colossus.

Doing this mockup gave me some insight to the game's actual interface: First of all, the tribal spirits should be smaller in relation to the game screen, or there's not much room for the player to maneuver. They're drawn large here for detail, but in reality the game should zoom out more to allow better versatility, or the player's commands will be limited to "walk, stomp". Obviously this will leave little detail to the people, but since you're a ravaging spirit, they won't matter much to you anyway, especially once you've got some serious powers to deal with them.

Every village could have tribal elders, too, and shaman, who will eventually summon, empower, and otherwise aid the rival spirit.
Lastly, perhaps if you build up a militia you could bring some warriors with you, but they'd be almost useless against the enemy guardian.
It would be little more than a bunch of guys charging left to right and attacking everything they see. Two little pixelly warriors slashing at each other as a massive tribal god rampages violently through their city.

I am write and poast

Bitquest is a blog to track the progress and development of three different but associated games, all set in the same universe of Quorum. Quorum is a pre-medieval fantasy world, sort of a tribal bronze-age setting. All three games are set in this world in slightly different time periods, and all featuring a different genre. This blog will track the following three projects:

HERODOM is a sidescrolling platformer/action-RPG with heavy emphasis on exploration -- part of the so-called "Metroidvania" genre. It features all the staples which make the genre enjoyable, such as a plethora of items, massive world, and throngs of enemies each with their own attack patterns and amusing death animations. Further, Herodom includes an open-world design, towns with NPCs, shops and quests, and various optional side features including a bestiary, crafting system, gardening and toy collecting. Herodom is the largest and most ambitious project of the three, but it is also the one I dedicate most of my time to developing.

SPLINTERED COAST is an island survival game with emphasis on construction. The goal is something between Stranded 2 and Wurm Online. You play as a small, goblinlike sub-race whose only goal is to carve out a living for himself on an otherwise-deserted island. Build tools, construct shelter, forage for food, hunt wild game, plant crops, and build an altar for worship and sacrifice to keep the gods happy. Because this is a world where medical technology is limited to bandages and herbalism, looking after your health and treating your injuries are very important considerations as well.

RODELL'S GLASS is a point-and-click adventure game with a focus somewhere between Sierra and LucasArts. Puzzles are specifically designed to be logical rather than abstract, so gameplay does not devolve into randomly clicking every pixel or trying to combine every item with each other. The story follows Rodell, a nomadic alchemist who's trying to develop an invisibility potion so he can live out his voyeuristic fantasies.