I thought I'd talk about using your nose to sniff out enemies (and friends) in the dangerous world of the Outback.
Upon reaching level 5, your character unlocks the nose wiggling ability. The nose wiggle is something unique to rabbits in real life, and in Pawsecuted they're often ridiculed for it by the nastier characters you'll meet.
Wiggling your nose on the world map reveals nearby unseen encounters. This is especially useful at night or in heavy bushland when you can't see surrounding tiles.
In battles, it's useful for working out enemy and friend positions. It takes time to wiggle the nose, so don't overuse this ability when you could be hitting the enemy or repositioning yourself instead.
As you level up, your nose wiggling will improve. Eventually you'll be able to see hideouts and track encounter spawn points, then find and destroy those hideouts to stop future spawns.
Even further along, you'll be able to sniff out Evolved Settlements. Settlements are important places to trade for resources, find mercenaries and settlers or accept bounty missions. So this is very helpful if you've just arrived in a new area and have yet to explore it.
The next time you see a rabbit wiggle their nose, they're probably just figuring out if you're friendly or not!
Steam Next Fest Broadcast #2
Watch the developer play the game or ask questions during the Steam Next Fest.
Steam Next Fest Broadcast
Watch the developer play the game or ask questions during the Steam Next Fest.
Devlog - Early Access Date and Progress Report
I've decided on an Early Access release date for late October 2022, and just wanted to talk a little about what I've been working on.
Firstly, there will be two endgame quests where you will be introduced to these two:
You can issue basic commands to your followers in battle. They can follow you, hold positions or charge all at once. This is useful if you want to find a more defensive position on the map, for example.
As you progress and gain experience, a "zooming" special ability becomes available which allows you to do things faster at the expense of energy and stamina.
I like to keep things realistic, so if you've never seen a rabbit doing "zoomies", here's a demonstration of what this ability represents:
As for late-game settlement building, you can create iron and coal mining sites and assign them to followers to gather lots of materials. Just give them equipment, feed them some rations, and come back in a few days.
Also - Hares, Foxes and Cats! These are found at Inns as mercenaries and followers, and come with the Feral tag unlike their Native-tagged Australian counterparts. It will be interesting adding quests making use of these new Evolved mammals.
And finally, difficulty options will be available on game start. Choose from presets Tourist, Normal or Hardcore mode, or create your own experience. You can go full on survival where every hit is deadly, or play more casually and enjoy the story.
Pawsecuted demo available now
You can now try the demo which contains 15-20 minutes of opening gameplay.
Scavengers, Bandits and Gangs
The world of Pawsecuted is a dangerous place. The Evolved were united during the early stages of the Great Mammal War, but the following decades of violence led to the inevitable collapse of society. In this post I'll talk about how encounters work in the game.
Encounters are groups of enemies you can meet on the game world. Each encounter belongs to a gang (scavengers, bandits, wildlife, etc) and each gang has preferences for where they spawn and what they're carrying.
For example, the Snake "gang" prefers dense bushland and don't carry anything (since they're snakes), so you'll face stronger groups of snakes deep in the forest compared to open plains. Likewise, the Scavenger gang carries more shovels and prefer city ruins since that's where all the good loot is located.
Each encounter is composed of a psuedo-random pool of animals and equipment. This adds some variety to each battle and you won't know exactly what you're up against immediately. You'll need to scout out an enemy on the battlefield to figure out what equipment they have and who's using it.
One battle might have you face off against a weakly possum with a hunting rifle, while in another you might be dealing with a tanky kangaroo with grenades. If a battle looks unwinnable, you can always run away of course to fight another day.
All this makes night time battles particularly dangerous. Since you can't see as far during the night, it's harder to figure out what the enemy has equipped. Everyone also moves slower and ranged weapon accuracy decreases as it gets darker.
