First of all, thank you so much to everyone who participated in three closed betas and visitors came all the way to game shows to cheer us up. Also all the kind words you guys sent us via email is what drove us to come to today.
Notes for those who played the demo
Existing play files may conflict with the current build. Be sure to play with 'New Game'!
Introducing the Early Access Version
In this early access version, we include 3 main regions out of 6 regions(Jungle, Moon Forest, Desert) and a few other areas to explore.
Main Region (Main questline areas where you obtain the Sigils)
Jungle
Moon Forest
Desert
Extra areas (Storylines and collectables are in this area)
Jungle Outskirt
Northern Central Forest
Museum
Difference To Demo Build
You can find a lot of contents added to the early access build unlike the demo version.
1. Adventure Journal
Through ‘Adventure Journal’, you can see the progress of your gameplay and also see the collected items such as hats, cooked dishes, bugs, fish and etcetera.
2. Housing
Basement of Hero’s House located in the Village of the Sun is now decoratable to your liking. The additional furniture and decorating pieces can be obtained through completing a quest or making new friends.
3. Vast Environmental Changes
There are some visual additions to vegetation of the world. Some react to Baby Ogu’s interaction. Not only that, there are random encounters like natural birds and packed venders. Explore the Secret Forest and observe the world as it responds to you!
Plans for the Future
There will be weekly development news and every 2~3 months we’ll have major updates, mainly the 3 other main regions of the game.
Please check out the Early Access Roadmap below! This is also on the main page of our steam store page!
The order of the main updates are as follows.
Harbor Town and Southern Central Forest
Snow Town and Southwest Central Forest
Sea Region
Center of the Central Forest (All area name is pending)
Other than these planned areas, we also plan to add more areas to the existing regions. We are open to ideas from you as well. If you enjoy a certain content and it is received well, we’ll focus on enhancing the experience by building more on it. We wish to have a flexible development path.
We’re always open to listen to you. Share your bug reports or ideas for the game through the steam community page and our discord!
If you are interested in content creation or press releases regarding our game launch, please check our ‘presskit’ Down below! 'Ogu and the Secret Forest’ Presskit(Link)
Thank you everyone for waiting. We’ll carry on creating what we love and until the full release, we’re not stopping.
Thank you again!
Game launch ahead!
Hello! ːsteamhappyː
After two days from today, 10am 24th March KST(6 pm 23rd of March PST) our game goes early access!
We’re checking every little inconvenience that might be present in the current build to make sure we deliver the best experience to you.
After the launch, we’ll carry on stabilising the game build and after that we’ll add the additional regions as the early access road map suggests.
The early access road map is as follows!
Also since we’re launching our game, the store page information and screenshots have been updated accordingly to the current build.
If you still haven’t checked our game trailer, please check the youtube video below!
It is all thanks to your interest and support that we could carry on creating what we love. Sincerely, we are grateful for the kind words. Thank you so much for waiting! ːsteamhappyː
Q&A Answers!
Hello!ːsteamhappyː We’ve assembled questions that you guys asked last week!
Q. How long is the playtime of the game?
In this current build, we have three main regions to play and the playtime will be around 5 hours to clear.
Single region contains about 1.5 hours of playtime, thus all six regions after the full release will have an estimate of 10 hours of game playtime.
However, this is only if you play the main storyline and not the additional contents such as sub quests, housing and collecting various collectibles. That’s going to take a lot longer than the main storyline.
Q. What’s the cost of the game?
The early access of the ‘Ogu and the Secret Forest’ will be 17.99 USD. The cost will increase when the game is fully released.
Q.Will there be any hidden hats ... ?!
Yeah! There are many hidden hats throughout the game. Some are sold in shops however, some may only be acquirable through secret discovery. There will be more hats to come!
Q. What is the origin of ‘Baby Ogu’? Is Ogu from the stars?
Q. Is multiplayer going to be featured in the game?
‘Ogu and the Secret Forest’ is a single player adventure game. Multiplayer is not available in the game.
Q. How old is ‘Baby Ogu’? lol
59000 years old.
Q. Can we hear the characters' voices?
Our main character ‘Baby Ogu’ is a silent protagonist. We wanted the players to imagine what the characters might sound like.
Also creating more than 100 unique characters’ voices might cause some difficulties to the creation process. This is why we decided not to include voices for the characters.
Q. Will there be more language supports?
Currently, ‘Ogu and the Secret Forest’ is supporting Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified). During the 1 year period of early access, we’ll try our best to include language support for more countries.
Q. What do you want the players to feel playing this game?
We want the players to feel nostalgic. The feeling of the joy and pure curiosity we felt when we played video games when we were younger. But most of all, we want everyone to enjoy it!
Q&A for Early Access
Hello! ːsteamhappyː
Early access for ‘Ogu and the Secret Forest’ is near us!
Before the release, we’d like to know if you have any questions about the game. We want to know what you are curious about on this early access build.
Any question can be asked freely like the examples below.
ex) What sort of collectables are there in the game?
ex) How long of a playtime can I expect with the early access build?
ex) How old is Baby Ogu?
Early next week, we’ll collect all the questions and will answer them in the next post. So please leave your questions below!
Thank you so much for your patience. We’re super excited to hear your questions!
[Dev Journal 4] Conceptualizing and Planning of the Desert Region
[Dev Journal 3] Conceptualizing and Planning of the Desert Region
Early look at how we created the Desert region.
Hello! ːsteamhappyː
Today, we’ll have a look at the conceptualization and the art of the dangerous and barren Desert area.
Atmosphere
Unlike the Jungle and the Moon Forest, the Desert area has much less puzzle element but has it’s main focus towards combat and pathfinding scenarios.
To represent its barren theme, the object design is much bigger than our main protagonist Baby Ogu.
Also unlike the other regions where the main route is guided with roads, the Desert region is big and has no road for guidance.
▼Concept Art
▼In-Game Representation
Caves
The Desert region is the homeland for the intelligent ancient Shrews. However, one day when the piece of the God fell to the ground, it corrupted the native organisms. This caused the feral animals and the cacti monsters to emerge and became a threat to the native Shrews.
The Shrews then had to escape underground so that they could hide from the Cactus monsters that were keen to devour them.
* These scenes are blurred to avoid spoilers.
You, the player, need to utilise your sense of direction with the help of the ancient Shrew technology to find your way to your destination.
Mecha Shrew DDAT-G 5000
To design the Desert region as a more dynamic and interesting blood-boiling area, we wanted to include something that is unique to this region.
This is why we included the giant monsters that are dozens of times bigger than our Baby Ogu. To combat this, we introduced the ‘Mecha Shrew DDAT-G 5000’
The ‘Mecha Shrew DDAT-G 5000’ is under construction within the ‘Shrew Village’ underground. To finish it’s construction they need the help of our hero Baby Ogu.
They say they need some key materials to finish its construction and Baby Ogu can help them find these materials through fighting the cactus monsters above the ground.
Play the game to find out more about what’s going on in the Desert region! Thank you!
Release Date Announcement
Hi, all! ːsteamhappyː The release date of 'Ogu and the Secret Forest' has been confirmed.
23 March 6:00 p.m(PST)
We continue to develop our build based on your feedback and opinions gathered through demos, gameshows, and CBT. Your anticipation and encouraging cheers give us the massive power to carry on.
Please stay tuned until the release date!
[Dev Journal 3] Conceptualizing and Planning of the Moon Forest Region
Hello! ːsteamhappyː
Today, we’ll have a look at the early concept art at the dark, mysterious and beautiful ‘Moon Forest’
The ‘Moon Forest’ is located in the northern area of the world. There are various puzzles in this region and you can also collect a variety of ores using the smelter.
Strange Vegetations
Unlike the ‘Jungle’ region where the ever shining Sun is its main motif, The ‘Moon Forest’ has a main motif of the subtle glow of the Moon. This led us to create a dark and calm atmosphere throughout this region. This is why the vegetation in this area has a colorfully glowing nature.
Concept Art
Ethnic Traditions
The ‘Moon Forest’ is home to a variety of bug villagers. We did not want the bug people to live in naturalistic simple architecture. We wanted it to represent some culture they might have.
This is the reason why we chose to have the traditional building architecture of Korea. We hoped that this would give the bug people some backstory of their culture. These styles of buildings are rarely found in adventure games and we hoped that it would be a unique feature of our world.
Next, we’ll have a look at the ‘Desert’ region. Thank you!
[Dev Journal 2] Conceptualizing and Planning of the Jungle Region
Hello! ːsteamhappyː
Today we’ll introduce you to the starting area of the game. This is how we started the creation of the ‘Jungle Region’.
The north east area of the world is the Jungle region. This area is divided in two which includes the Starting Area, where you start your journey, and the Jungle Outskirt where the story builds up.
Since this is where we make the first impression of the game, we wanted to create an area where it is full of visual interests along with some fairly simple puzzles and combat scenarios that will introduce the players to the gameplay.
Waterfall of the Meditating Monkey
The Village of the Sun’s residents, the monkeys, have a deep respect towards nature and are living in harmony with it. Also they always train their minds for peace and clarity by meditation. You can occasionally encounter these meditating monkeys at the Waterfall in front of the village.
Temple of the Sun
At the ‘Temple of the Sun’ lies the ‘Sigil of the Sun’. One of the 6 broken pieces of the world. The monkeys are waiting for the chosen one from their folklore to arrive and bring harmony back to the world. They have found one of the broken pieces and are keeping it safe for the rightful hero’s arrival.
To visually represent these thematic concepts, we’ve tried to incorporate the architectural style of the ancient magnificent and mysterious ‘Angkor Wat’ as a reference.
‘The Temple of the Sun’ is the first dungeon that the player will come across. We’ve tried to represent the classic adventure-game style dungeon that we all love. It also introduces to the players the hints of core mechanics of puzzles and combat. We designed the dungeon so that it represents few of the core gameplay mechanics.
Before, the dungeon only contained puzzles until you encountered the boss. However, we thought that this wasn’t enough of a representation of our game play. This is why we redesigned the dungeon so that it has more combat scenarios including the ‘Monkey Sentinel’ fight.
Village of the Sun
‘Village of the Sun’ is the first town that you’ll come across adventuring in the vast world of secret forest. This is the biggest map so far out of approximately 200 maps that exist in the game right now. There are various NPCs including Merchants, Quests and information givers, Fishing tutorial guy and also people that just wanna have a little chat with our protagonist ‘Baby Ogu’. There is also another important aspect to this town. The ‘Hero’s House’.
Hero’s House
Early design of the ‘Hero’s House’ was a simple area where you can visit throughout the adventure to replenish various expendables and maybe harvest some crops and upgrade some gears. However, since we created more interactable objects including hotspring, upgrade station, cooking campfire and chairs just to name a few, we wanted the ‘Hero’s House’ to be able to be customized to the player’s liking. This is why we implemented the housing system.
Housing system was developed and implemented during the 3rd closed beta test and still is under construction to be refined. We’re currently developing more furniture and objects so that you can have a unique home. Until early access, we’ll implement as much as we can.
Next, we’ll talk about the ‘Moon Forest’. See you soon!
[Dev Journal 1] Early Plans and Concept Arts
Hello! ːsteamhappyː
First of all, we welcome with a warm heart to all the people waiting for the game and all of you that came through the steam nextfest! This is ‘Ogu and the Secret Forest’.
We’re currently working on the build for launching the early access in March. We can’t share many details yet. So instead, for the people that are wondering how ‘Ogu and the Secret Forest’ came about, we wanted to share some thought processes that’s been considered before all this journey started. A little glimpse at the mind of developers if you will. Hope you like it!
The World Building and the Structure of the Game
‘Ogu and the Secret Forest’ has always had a main theme of an adventure of a child who is very curious and pure.
‘Baby Ogu’ the main protagonist who is a ‘selfless curious platypus venturing into a new unknown world guided by a mysterious powerful being’ was our starting point. To create a story around this theme, we drew a lot of motifs from the famous ‘Alice in wonderland’, Studio Ghibli's ‘Spirited away’ and ‘My neighbour Totoro’.
We didn’t want the path to be linear so that the player may choose their own way of progression. This is why we decided to create a world with several differently themed regions and let the players choose which region they may want to visit. It is because of this reason we’ve decided to create the ‘Go find the Sigils’ system.
Due to the lack of development manpower with only 4 people in the whole project, of course creating something that is completely nonlinear is without a doubt a great challenge. However, until the complete official release we’ll try our best to create something that is as unique of an experience as it can be for every other player. That is our goal.
Character Concept
Every character design and animation has been hand drawn by the original artist ‘Jong-Beom Moon’ of the ‘Moonlab Studio’. Since the artist has a liking towards animals and bugs, you may find the unique yet somewhat familiar style of the artwork quite charming.
In the current demo version you can meet our hero ‘Baby Ogu’ and the monkeys of the ‘Village of the Sun’. However, We assure you there are a variety of animal friends such as birds, shrews, insects, hippo and many more that are eager to meet you as well!
That’s it for now! We’ll tell you more about our journey with the creation process of ‘Jungle region’, ‘Moon Forest’, ‘Desert region’ and so on. Thank you and see you again!
Play Streaming of 3rd CBT
We're now streaming the play video of Gimgi who is the music director of Ogu and the Secret Forest. He'll play the 3rd CBT build which is running exclusively in Korea. In 3rd CBT, you can witness 'Moon Forest' and 'Desert' that will be opened after releasing Early Access.
