Arctic Awakening: Gameplay & Dev Insights - AdventureX 2022
Event Information
We're part of the AdventureX 2022 event from November 3 - 9. We'll be running several streams throughout the event and will also be at the in-person event in London on November 5-6!
About Arctic Awakening
Arctic Awakening is a first-person narrative adventure set in the unforgiving Arctic. Your plane crashed in a storm, leaving only your court-mandated therapy robot for company as you journey to find your co-pilot and uncover the mysteries buried beneath the ice.
Arctic Awakening: Gameplay & Dev Insights - AdventureX 2022
Event Information
We're part of the AdventureX 2022 event from November 3 - 9. We'll be running several streams throughout the event and will also be at the in-person event in London on November 5-6!
About Arctic Awakening
Arctic Awakening is a first-person narrative adventure set in the unforgiving Arctic. Your plane crashed in a storm, leaving only your court-mandated therapy robot for company as you journey to find your co-pilot and uncover the mysteries buried beneath the ice.
We're showing new gameplay at each as well as making the demo available in-person for the first time at Day of the Devs and AdventureX. If you happen to be in London for AdventureX, come say hello and give the demo a whirl -- James and Joff will be manning the booth!
The demo will also be available again on Steam with the latest updates/fixes through November 13. Keep the feedback coming, it's been incredibly helpful for our process to improve the game!
The best way to stay informed on future beta/demo availability is by following/wishlisting our Steam page as they'll all be run through here. You can also join our Discord, Twitter or newsletter for future updates.
Tokyo Game Show Demo
We've been hard at work making improvements to the game based on all of your feedback from the first demo release, and we're excited to show that work off with an updated demo as part of this year's Tokyo Game Show!
Hundreds of bug fixes, polish and other improvements have gone into this new demo. We've also overhauled various systems for navigation, pacing, traversal and more. The demo will only be available for a limited time -- through September 23. So be sure to try it out if you missed it last time and let us know what you think! We appreciate any and all feedback as we continue to iterate and push the gameplay towards a release-ready state!
The best way to stay informed on future beta/demo availability is by following/wishlisting our Steam page as they'll all be run through here. You can also join our Discord, Twitter or newsletter for future updates.
Devlog #8: Early Concepts
Just as with the character concepts, we've gone through significant iterations at every step of the process. However, pre-production, which in our case started way back in 2019, can take on a life of its own.
While we had an idea for the type of story we wanted to tell, we had all sorts of ideas for how we might tell it. It didn't always revolve around the Arctic – or even on this planet! We had to visually explore different environments and moods before landing on what you see in Arctic Awakening today.
These are usually the concepts that never see the light of day, but we came across these cleaning up some old backup drives and just had to share them! This is just a taste of some of the off-the-wall concepts that came out of very early pre-production stages. Who knows, maybe one of them could turn into something one day...
These early concepts were created in collaboration with Lane Brown, who did much of the artwork for our previous games.
For more behind-the-scenes looks at the development of the game, be sure to wishlist/follow here on Steam. You can also join our Discord, Twitter or newsletter for future updates.
Devlog #7: Demo Post-Mortem
We ran our first public beta of Arctic Awakening during the LudoNarraCon festival in early May. It was both terrifying and exhilarating to finally have people outside of the studio playing the game after over two years of development.
The majority of the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, which has been a real validator as we continue to move forward with development. There were lots of little bugs, glitches and areas needing more polish (many of which we've already fixed), but what I'd like to focus on here are a few key issues that kept coming up. Let's discuss what we found and what we're doing about it:
Getting Lost
By far the most common issue that players encountered during the demo was getting lost in the forest. On the one hand, this isn't surprising since that is the premise of the game. However, we of course want to maintain the right balance so that you can continue progressing in the story.
Much of this issue came down to Alfie's (the therapy bot) AI and navigation. In the blizzard scene after the crash, he failed to maintain his proximity rule, allowing you to wander off unchecked into infinity. He'll never block you from going where you want, but the idea is that he'll always be able to help get you back on track.
In the final scene of the demo during the daylight, many assumed they were supposed to be following Alfie, when in fact he was following you. Since Alfie tried to stay to the edge of your vision, it caused many to constantly turn off the trail and get hopelessly lost.
So, what are we doing about this? Well, we're making Alfie's navigation AI much smarter! We've been overhauling how these systems work so that he's always adhering to his proximity rule for starters. We're also making changes so that it's more clear when you should and shouldn't be following him.
I won't get too into the weeds right now to avoid ruining the magic of it, but the end result of the new system should be that Alfie feels much more like a companion coming along for the ride. He'll guide you in some instances, but for the most part it will be up to you to find your own path through this world.
Pacing
A big part of Arctic Awakening is obviously the conversations between the characters and how those relationships evolve. However, it became apparent that there were some areas within the demo where this either went on a bit too long or wasn't well-balanced when paired with things to do.
We've heard this feedback loud and clear and have moved things around, cut entire sections and added new things to do to make the conversations better flow and fit together. We've also gone back and revised other areas beyond the demo scenes that we now felt would run into the same issues. We're confident the pacing of the game in general will benefit greatly from this initial testing!
Traversal
Many games in this genre have very simplified traversal systems where you can only traverse exactly where the level designer specified. However, one of our design pillars for this game (both in the story and level design) has been player agency. So, we decided to build a more complex traversal system that allows you to define your own path through the world.
However, with the increased complexity comes an increased surface area for bugs. The core systems seemed to work well enough, but there were many false-positives with prompts for different traversal mechanics. There were also many instances where it felt like you should be able to simply step up onto a rock, plane wing, etc – only to be met with a "climb up" prompt.
Our intention is for these traversal mechanics to be smooth, consistent and intuitive. In order to achieve that, we've also ripped this system apart and re-built it from the ground up. It now scans the environment around you and detects the type of obstacles in your way to more intelligently identify the best mechanic to prompt at any given point. We're also moving forward with a rock climbing mechanic that wasn't shown in the demo, but which will add even more freedom of exploration in the final release!
What's Next?
We've already addressed many of the above issues and we're getting close on the rest. We'll be periodically making the demo available for beta testing at future festivals or other events into the fall. The feedback is incredibly helpful and will benefit the full game, so we hope you'll join us for future tests.
The best way to stay informed on future beta/demo availability is by following/wishlisting our Steam page as they'll all be run through here. You can also join our Discord, Twitter or newsletter for future updates.
New Arctic Awakening Story Trailer
We've always dreamed of having a game showcased at E3. That wasn't in the cards this year with E3 being canceled, but the many related showcases go on. So, we were thrilled to be selected for the Future Games Show summer showcase along with many other exciting upcoming games!
Our initial reveal trailer was a challenge to create as we hadn't cast our voice actors and we didn't have a whole lot of polished gameplay to work with. Fast forward a year and we've got loads more content to pair with our amazing voice actors.
Once again, we worked with the talented Benjamin Combes on the new trailer to expand on the mystery of the story while giving a better sense of the gameplay. Here's the end result:
What do you think? Any theories about what's really going on? Join the discussion in our Discord and say hello on our socials (Twitter, Instagram, TikTok)!
New Trailer at Future Games Show
It's June, and you know what that means -- E3! All the gaming news you can handle and more, at the biggest--
*psstt... it's been cancelled this year...*
Oh... uhh, right, so there's no official E3 this year. But, that doesn't mean the showcases just stop. While we just had our first demo, we've also been working on a brand new story trailer that goes well beyond.
We're so excited to share this new trailer with you at this year's Future Games Show summer showcase on Saturday, June 11 (12PM PT / 3PM ET / 8PM BST)!
You'll be able to watch live on YouTube and Twitch, so head to the Future Games Show page for more details. Be sure to drop into Discord where we'll be hosting a live watch event as well!
Arctic Awakening Stream: Gameplay and Behind the Scenes
Arctic Awakening is taking part in this year's LudoNarraCon, which runs from May 5-9! Join the GoldFire Studios team as we play through the first public demo and provide a behind the scenes look at various development processes that have gone into the game.
The stream will go live on May 5 at 11AM PDT (2PM EST, 6PM GMT -- 1 hour after LudoNarraCon starts). Come join us live on our Steam page as we'll be answering questions in the chat. The stream will then play on a loop for the rest of the festival for those that can't make it live.
Also, from May 5-9, the demo will be available to download and play during the event.
Seeing as how we take a "story first" approach to our development, Fellow Traveller's LudoNarraCon Steam festival has long been near and dear to our hearts. So, we're more than thrilled to announce that Arctic Awakening has been selected to showcase at this year's event!
The most exciting part? DEMO TIME!
Yes, our very first public demo will be available for the dates of the event only -- which you can play from May 5-9. This is still very much a work in progress, and all of your feedback from the demo will be incorporated into the rest of the game's development!
We're especially excited that we've managed to wrap up voice casting and get into the recording booth to voice all of our characters for the demo. We'll also be revealing our fantastic cast during the event!
In addition to the demo, we'll be running a stream hosted on our Steam page with new behind-the-scenes looks at the development of the game from multiple members of our team.
We've been working on this game for over 2 years, and it has mostly been in the dark with very few outside of the studio playing a build. So, we' can't wait for all of you to get your hands on this early version and see what you think!
Be sure to stop in and say hello on Discord, Twitter and TikTok in the meantime!
