Still Decay is a reimagining and expansion of one of my old projects- "Decay". The old version was an entrant in the Doom 3 Boss contest a few years back. Essentially it was supposed to be a FPS in a gothinc/industrial environment. The story (by my personal standarts) was lackluster, but it was still a begining. You are prbably scratching your head by now so I;ll answer the big question- no I didn't win, but in my deffence - that was mostly because all of my focus went into creating a nice interactive environment, as opposed to the actual boss. Regardless of that, even then I had the desire to expand on the original idea and lift it to new heights.
Back to the "now". I started this revisit a week ago with the basic idea of creating a gothic/victorian environment where the player would advance through a vertical environment - namely an ancient civilisation's tower. On your way you will have to solve simple FPS puzzles, and mostly jump through platforms as well as use and upgrade using the skill system.
I haven't implemented it yet but my plans are to be able to (First) pick one passive, one active skill and a weapon (Second) find an upgrade station (Third) upgrade ONE of the above only ONCE per station. Once you use the station it will shut down. The twist is- weapons will have more levels, and will be leveled up by killing enemies as well as the upgrade stations. So that should provide for an interesting play-through more than once.
In Still Decay all your opponents will be humans. That will make sence and is in accordance with the story. The story itself will be straight forward and simple and will mostly give you a background for what you're doing and your motivation, as well as explain your environment. Speaking of environments. As you can see from the screenshots, I'm trying to create a number of distinctly different places. The underlying difference will be between the "machine" and "spiritual" environments. Warm and bright in ones and dark and cold in the others. The project barely passed the quarter-mark, so design wise there will be small changes, mostly in the textures. The bare look I've got is to me essential to allow smooth gameplay and make a point- that you are in an ancient ruin, that is falling apart.
Release date is somewhere in july. Can't say for certain for now, but my aim in the beginning was to finish in 3 weeks and that was a week ago. In any case expect more screens in a few days (say, mid-week).
That is it for now. Check the page reglarly for more screens. Thanks for reading my loooong and overly text-y news, and see you in a couple of days.
