First Official Trailer for Eastshade
After over two years of development, we’re proud to present our first trailer!
Not a Walking Simulator
I want to clear the air about something. I’ve done a terrible job explaining what Eastshade is like to play. Part of that is because this project has been evolving over these two years, but the bigger reason is that my familiarity with the game makes me forget to talk about important points that nobody could possibly know. Jaclyn and I have concocted a concise explanation of what the game is:
“You are a traveling painter, exploring the island of Eastshade. Capture the world on canvas using your artist’s easel. Talk to the inhabitants to learn about their lives. Make friends and help those in need. Discover mysteries and uncover secrets about the land. Surmount natural impasses to reach forgotten places. Experience how your actions impact the world around you.”
Eastshade is a non-violent game; however, it’s not a game without mechanics, progression or goals. To me, a walking sim is a game that forgoes these things and focuses solely on atmosphere. Mechanically, Eastshade is a game that gives players the space to wander. We’ve made an effort to make the world feel alive and responsive as players explore. But there is also a clear sense of direction and progression. Here is a condensed description of the things you can do in Eastshade:
Meet the Inhabitants – Interact with the locals through dynamic conversations with discoverable topics and branching dialogue.
Capture Your Surroundings – Compose paintings anywhere in the world and offer them to characters to gain items, knowledge, and unlock secrets
Find and Craft – Acquire materials and schematics to surmount obstacles.
Interweaving Micro-Stories – Actions and dialogue decisions affect future interactions and outcomes as you meet new characters.
Story wise, Eastshade is not one particular tale that we were burning to tell. In order to allow the player to live the experiences we let go of orchestrating a controlled storyline and focused on building the world at large. To that end, Eastshade is filled with many little stories; each with their own effects and consequences on the state of the world. If you love the distilled sense of place that some walking sims have, Eastshade has it for you. However, if you weren’t a fan of Dear Esther or Gone Home, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will dislike Eastshade.
Hopefully that clears things up a bit, and hopefully the new landing page does a better job of giving newcomers the gist of what the game actually is.
Without Combat, What Do You Do?
The title of this post is a ridiculous question to me. At the very least it should be a ridiculous question to any game designer, but I also think it should be a ridiculous question to any gamer. It appears the latter is not the case, because its a question I’ve gotten more than a few times when I try to describe what this game is to people. I suppose it makes sense, because games wherein you control a single avatar tend to be about killing enemies in one way or another, and people may not have considered how very specific that paradigm is.
I’m not saying there isn’t innovation left to be done inside that box, or that I think people should stop making these kinds of games. Combat is human, and its an engaging subject to make games about. But there are other aspects to humanity that we can explore through games. I have nothing against dude-killing games, but I do think its odd how many game designers seem to only think inside of that particular box. There are certainly many genres that typically don’t involve combat, but when I describe Eastshade as a single-player, first-person, open-world game, people usually think Role Playing Game. And everyone knows that the particular role you play in a Role Playing Game is the role of a hero. And everyone knows that heroes live primarily in worlds where 90% of the population are wandering bandits waiting to be killed.
So the question “If there is no combat how will the game be interesting?” makes the same amount of sense to me inverted: “If all you do is kill dudes how will the game be interesting?” To a person who’s played mountains of games wherein you spend most of your time killing dudes, the latter seems like a ridiculous question. When you strip away the weird box thinking part about dude-killing, the question becomes “What will make the game interesting?” which is basically asking “Will the game be good?”.
So will Eastshade be any good? The game has changed a lot from what I initially set out to make. There used to be survival mechanics, which gave people something to grab onto when trying to understand what the game is (courtesy of Minecraft). Those mechanics are gone now. So what’s left? If I said its like a first-person, open-world adventure game it wouldn’t be totally off the mark. But the state of a traditional adventure game’s world is completely dependent on the player’s state through the game. The guard won’t move from the door until you do some absurd chain of lock and key puzzles to make it happen. Eastshade goes on without you, and the feedback from the world is more systemic, predictable, and granular.
What if I put it to you like this: Eastshade is not a game that you play, but rather a place that you go. There are daily solar and lunar eclipses, the conifers are purple, much of the architecture is spherical, and the people look like monkeys. Stuff happens. Do you want to visit?
