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KickStarter ICY: Frostbite Edition

KingDinosaurGames

King Dinosaur Games
Patron
Developer
Joined
Aug 6, 2014
Messages
143
Location
Austin
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Your environmental art is fantastic, really suits the setting.
 

OwNathan

Innervoid Interactive
Developer
Joined
Nov 11, 2013
Messages
210
Here's another update, this one is about hunting.

Today we’ll speak about a core feature of Icy: the hunting. Hunting is of the utmost importance to all the people living in the Frozen World, for the simple reason that the cold climate prevents to grow any kind of food, since even during summer’s nights is not rare to have temperatures below 0 degrees.

The few humans living in the Frozen World need to eat and the most reliable source of food is, in most case, killing other living beings to eat their meat. Meaning that most nomads hunt for animals as part of their daily routine, with all the dangers that hunting in a wild wood may bring. It means also that some people suit themselves with human’s meat and cannibals are a rare but scary reality in the Frozen World.





Phase 1 – Hunting strategy



While travelling on the world map the player can see a lot of forests around and they’re the only place where hunting is possible. The player just need to move his/her party on a forest and press the hunting/scavenging button to activate the hunting phase. Then he/she will be able to choice between spending more time hunting and taking less risks or spread the party to cover a larger area, increasing the chance of having trouble.

Hunting is safe when the player meets a lonely deer slowly walking around, but even a small wolf pack can be a threat to an unexperienced group. Of course humans can rely on firearms to have an advantage over the possible threats, since animals are scared and easily killed by a noisy gun, but as we said in the previous news bullets are a scarce resource that’s also used as currency in the Frozen World, so shooting in full automatic on a deer’s body could actually be more costly than buying the meat in the nearest settlement.

That’s why hunters mostly rely on different ranged weapon for their job: bows. They are cheap, silent and arrows can be pulled out of the carcass and used more than once. You can’t use your bow to efficiently fight in a firefight, but it is a perfect weapon to hunt without wasting precious bullets or using complex traps.





Phase 2 – Meeting the beasts



During the hunting events the player will have the chance to meet different kinds of animals and each one of them offers a different threat, different rewards and compels the player to use different tactics to take care of the situation. Herbivores aren’t usually a threat, but when the group gets surrounded by a lynx pack the hunters may become the preys, meaning that they will need a completely different approach to emerge victorious.

Living in the Frozen World is living in a situation of constant danger and the player needs to know that before doing any step. If the group has no urgent need for food the best tactic may be to avoid predators and use bows and arrows to take down some herbivores, but when half of your people are starving the best way to survive could be to shoot with firearms on some wolves. Wolves’ meat isn’t good as deer’s one, but even rats’ meat is good when starving.

The hunting outcome doesn’t depend only on what the player face during hunting, but also on how much the player is skilled in hunting. Being an RPG, Icy will let the player choose and improve different skills, hunting is one of those skills. A good hunter will have more ways to hunt down animals, will take less risks and will have better outcomes.

The next time we will speak about the scavenging, another important part of a nomad’s life that’s not devoid of dangers.

Link



Your environmental art is fantastic, really suits the setting.
Your comment just made an artist happy!






Another important thing: since you guys really didn't like the new name, we'll start two different surveys during our small Indiegogo campaign: one to decide the real, serious name of the game; another to decide a not so serious name. Through a free DLC or something like that it will be possibile to play the stupid version of Icy (but don't worry, there will be only some minor changes that won't take times or money away from the real game).

So, do your best and worst (especially your worst) to give us some names to use in the surveys. I already took note of some that were suggested in the previous pages.
 

toro

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 14, 2009
Messages
14,024
Frozen World is alright. Somewhat generic but a good game will survive even with such a name.

And yes, it starts to look good.
 
Weasel
Joined
Dec 14, 2012
Messages
1,865,661
Looking quite good :salute:

Another important thing: since you guys really didn't like the new name, we'll start two different surveys during our small Indiegogo campaign: one to decide the real, serious name of the game; another to decide a not so serious name. Through a free DLC or something like that it will be possibile to play the stupid version of Icy (but don't worry, there will be only some minor changes that won't take times or money away from the real game).

So, do your best and worst (especially your worst) to give us some names to use in the surveys. I already took note of some that were suggested in the previous pages.

Cold as a Witch's Clit
 

Nael

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2005
Messages
11,384
Location
Indy
Looks like a wintry version of Expeditions: Conquistador, which is not a bad thing.
 

Darkzone

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2013
Messages
2,323
It looks very interesting.
Frozen World is really not a very good name, but also not a bad name. And every name that i came up is already taken by other things.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Yeah, Frozen World should be considered an acceptable name until you guys come up with or find something that you really like.

One thing you can do is to go etymology hunting and look at various Greek, Latin, etc. roots of related words to see if there's anything that sounds cool and recognisably frigid - just don't pick something obviously pretentious.
 

hello friend

Arcane
Joined
Feb 26, 2012
Messages
7,847
Location
I'm on an actual spaceship. No joke.
The Cold is a Prison.
Vaguely evocative, can mean anything you want it to mean. Is the cold that of other people in a world of harsh survival, as in trapped with the other inmates? Is it the day to day struggle with staying warm and fed that is a prison? To be fair, anyone with that mentality wouldn't last a week.

Less serious names:

Cool Times.

Chill Skedaddlin'.
This name reflects the nomadic nature of the game, while being impossible to take seriously.

On another note, why did you decide on bullets as the main currency instead of, say, food. I get that bullets are useful, but when food and shelter are the main challenges facing people erryday, you'd think filling your belly would take priority, and it woudln't be overly prone to spoilage at low temperatures. Maybe have a barter economy?
 

OwNathan

Innervoid Interactive
Developer
Joined
Nov 11, 2013
Messages
210
On another note, why did you decide on bullets as the main currency instead of, say, food. I get that bullets are useful, but when food and shelter are the main challenges facing people erryday, you'd think filling your belly would take priority, and it woudln't be overly prone to spoilage at low temperatures. Maybe have a barter economy?
Well, you're not wrong. The basic economy is based on barter and lot of times is the best way to trade items. But since food isn't a reliable value (how can you compare some meat to some berries? it's not that easy) for stuff like rewards or big trades people use bullets. It's not completely realistic, since we have a single kind of bullets and in game like Metro we have a specific kind of bullets that are used as currency, but it's a decent compromise.

Anyway, it will be possible to trade anything, so food can always be used to trade with people.
 

OwNathan

Innervoid Interactive
Developer
Joined
Nov 11, 2013
Messages
210
Another update, this one is about our imminent Indiegogo campaign and the scavenging system in Icy.

We gladly announce that our Indiegogo campaign for Icy will start in the next days. We aim to find the few funds we need to properly polish Icy, in order to offer a better experience to all the players. With the occasion, we will cover another core mechanics in Icy, the scavenging.

At a first glance the scavenging system may appear similar to the hunting one, but offers different rewards and also a different approach to the situation.

Just like it is for hunting, the player’s scavenging skill is really important to increase the loot and reduce the risks, but a good scavenger need also proper tools to go through blocked or dangerous path, that are also the most rewarding paths since various generations of nomads already looted what was easier to loot.




To trigger a scavenging event the player must reach one of the many scavenging areas placed all around the map: farmhouses, gas stations, warehouses, apartments or even small ancient settlements lying in ruins. Just like it happens for hunting, the player will be able to decide whether to invest more time in the activity lessening the risks or to do a quick but dangerous scavenging in the area.

Scavenging is risky because of many different factors: the ancient buildings may lie in ruins and every step may lead to a collapse, many building relied only on electrical lighting to light the inner rooms and wandering in the dark may be risky, a scavenger willing to reach a higher floor whose stairs are fallen may have to climb his way up and falling down could mean getting hurt, even badly.




While scavenging the player will at first have an overview of the area he/she is scavenging in, then he/she may trigger a secondary event that is related to a specific situation, like a closed metal door or a massive hole in the ground that prevents the player to reach the opposite side of the room. That’s the moment when the proper tools may come in handy and the experienced scavenger can use a crowbar to force a door, a lockpick to open a sturdy chest, an explosive to blow up a fragile wall or a rope to help himself to climb without many risks. The player will be able to find those kind of tools around the world, scavenging, or to buy them in the various settlements.




According to the specific situation, there will be different ways to get through the obstacle and obtain the loot and each tool has certain pros and cons. A crowbar and a picklock may both be useful to open a door, but while the crowbar is not that light to carry around, the lockpick is small and light weighted. On the opposite side, the lockpick is a valuable item that can be sold for some nice bullets and it can also allow the player to open doors that a crowbar doesn’t. Each tool is different and the player will need to plan what to sell, what to buy and what to leave behind.

Scavenging is the cheapest way for the player to obtain useful or valuable items, which can be used during dialogues, to appease a companion or to sell them in exchange of bullets. Having the right tool for the right situation will not only improve the chance of finding valuable loot during the scavenging, but it will also allow the player to have more ways to pass through certain obstacles during dialogues, gaining an advantage over a possible threat.
 
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OwNathan

Innervoid Interactive
Developer
Joined
Nov 11, 2013
Messages
210
We gladly announce that our Indiegogo campaign for Icy will start in the next days.



You guys are going with icy?


:hmmm:

We are going to run an awesome survey and anyone will be able to vote for the names we picked among the various suggestions.


Why Indiegogo and not Kickstarter OwNathan ?
Because we're poor, that's why.
Since we live and work in Italy, we would need a foreign company structure to start a KS, like we did for Zaharia. Too bad the entire thing, thanks to the awesome bureaucracy in our country, would've costed us a third of the entire budget we had to develop Icy. And since we won't ask for that much, it wasn't simply worth all those money and all the possible related problems.

I know that Indiegogo isn't the same, but it's the only choice we had. It seemed to us kinda retard to spend a third of our budget to run a KS campaign only to have the risk of another failure. Choosing Indiegogo we will have some visibility anyway and we hope to gain the few bucks we need to properly polish a complete game, instead of risking to cancel the development of Icy.
 

tuluse

Arcane
Joined
Jul 20, 2008
Messages
11,400
Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
The English in the description is much smoother than your first pitch was. I'm still upset you guys didn't get funded for that one, but I'm going to pledge to this one too.

Have you guys played Neoscavanger at all? Your looting seems similar.
 

OwNathan

Innervoid Interactive
Developer
Joined
Nov 11, 2013
Messages
210
The English in the description is much smoother than your first pitch was. I'm still upset you guys didn't get funded for that one, but I'm going to pledge to this one too.
Yeeee! It seems that watching english and american TV series in the original language without subs for more than a year it's finally paying off.

Have you guys played Neoscavanger at all? Your looting seems similar.
Yes, I did. If I recall correctly, the idea of Icy came to my mind after playing NEO Scavenger, as an experiment of merging both survival and RPG mechanics. Due to the few funds we had and a lot of design changes it came out as a quite different game, but the two games are certainly similar in some ways.
 

OwNathan

Innervoid Interactive
Developer
Joined
Nov 11, 2013
Messages
210
Will the available scavengable loot in a location decrease over time, or will it be a fixed percentage with relevant modifiers (skills, tools) applied?
Small locations will be deactivated for some days, the cities will provide more scavenge opportunities before deactivating.
Do tools break?
Yep.


If anyone is interested, that's a preview of the Indiegogo page: http://www.indiegogo.com/project/preview/e2bbd29f
Feel free to share your honest feedback, I won't cry. Well, not too much. The video is missing because I'm still uploading it.
 

clemens

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Mar 27, 2011
Messages
315
Codex 2014 Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
Only became aware of this just now, but that's not a bad pitch.
I also like how you don't take yourselves too seriously.
Considering giving you my monies.
When is the campaign scheduled to launch ?
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
OwNathan I would say please do not have a name poll during your indiegogo.

(1) It risks being perceived as rudderless, not sure about your direction. This isn't rational, of course, because renaming your game doesn't mean anything about how good you are at making games, but it just invites thoughts like "they can't even..."
(2) If you finish the poll during the campaign and announce the new name, it also confuses a lot of people - you are backing for XYZ, previously known as Icy! Crowdfunding is all about communicating your project clearly and memorably to the world.

It would make sense to do it after, or before.
 

Kaldurenik

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 3, 2010
Messages
895
Divinity: Original Sin
Looks interesting to bad i have 0 money :( but i if i get some money i will probably back it.


Other then that:
I don't have any problem with the voice acting in the video
There is no information about DRM - Stores that you want it on. Sure you probably want it on Steam but its a good idea to note it down.
I know its a bit like copying what everyone else do. But it might be a good idea to have a img that show the rewards and a list that show each tier.
Don't switch the name around - a bad idea in my opinion

Then i have my own question about the game:
Is the encounter areas a giant pool. Or do it depends where your character / party is?
Are you able to see all the areas on the map from the start or do you need to find them?
 

OwNathan

Innervoid Interactive
Developer
Joined
Nov 11, 2013
Messages
210
I don't have any problem with the voice acting in the video
And I consider this as one of the biggest achievements in my life. Consider that I'm the idiot wearing the busby.
There is no information about DRM - Stores that you want it on. Sure you probably want it on Steam but its a good idea to note it down.
That's a good point, I'll fix this right now.

I know its a bit like copying what everyone else do. But it might be a good idea to have a img that show the rewards and a list that show each tier.
We're going to do that, but right now I have no one free to do the graphics, I could only write down a list.



Is the encounter areas a giant pool. Or do it depends where your character / party is?
Some areas are more dangerous than others, especially the ones near the end-game area.

Are you able to see all the areas on the map from the start or do you need to find them?
Most of them are visible, but there are some hidden places and the player must travel near them to actually see their icon on the map.

OwNathan I would say please do not have a name poll during your indiegogo.

(1) It risks being perceived as rudderless, not sure about your direction. This isn't rational, of course, because renaming your game doesn't mean anything about how good you are at making games, but it just invites thoughts like "they can't even..."
(2) If you finish the poll during the campaign and announce the new name, it also confuses a lot of people - you are backing for XYZ, previously known as Icy! Crowdfunding is all about communicating your project clearly and memorably to the world.

It would make sense to do it after, or before.
Mh, I tought it could be a funny thing, but I guess we'll stick with Icy - Journey on the White Wasteland, that should be post-apocalyptic enough to clarify an otherwise generic word like Icy.

But I think we'll do the survey for the less serious name, that one wouldn't affect anything else than the people who will gloriously choose the stupidest name in the poll. Then we'll do a free DLC to turn the serious version into the retard one. And I'll sing on the main theme, only that should be something you will all both regret and appreciate to listen.

Only became aware of this just now, but that's not a bad pitch.
I also like how you don't take yourselves too seriously.
Considering giving you my monies.
When is the campaign scheduled to launch ?
Today, or tomorrow in the case of really bad feedbacks about something. And I hope we won't.
 

Kaldurenik

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 3, 2010
Messages
895
Divinity: Original Sin
Well even having a list like:
¨ A B C D E F G Reward
A X X X
B X X
C
D
E
F
G

Tier

(and so on) would be good. Eh its hard to show on the forum :D
 

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