The Pond: First encounter Windows, Linux game

The Pond: First encounter

Holsoft_CZ | Released 2016

This game project is successor of original idea, which was making first person relaxation game taking place in middle-european rural area.

The development of game officially has begun in late 2014, and since then I have experienced a lot. I have set my goals too high for release in 2015, even Q1 of 2016 is really optimistic. So I made decision to cut the game significantly. The game will be single player story mode as it was originally planned, where you will represent mentally ill man, who is trying to survive and win over his twisted mind.

And the promised rest -> relaxation mode, was renamed to sandbox mode and it will enable you to freely move in the world and play with several technical items, make your home near pond and live virtual life. There will be several activities and possibility to challenge other players, such as fishing, making electro appliances work and others! There is one thing - this part of the game will be delivered as free DLC after the story mode is released.

There are nearly no screenshots at the moment, so I will reveal part of the story.

The story

You are mentally ill man, who has been treated for a long time by psychiatrist. Your medication went well, so the doctor decided to try alternative treatment and send you to your brother's in law pond. You got your medication and agreed to go there. But what if there is something mysterious going on? Are you hallucinating or experiencing real thing? You will starting to remember things that happened there and maybe, you will find your cause of all the problems. This game will show you how your mind can trick you, and won't leave you calm.

I can tell you, that the end of the game will also reveal second game, which is being prepared. And I guarantee you, you will be shocked.

THE POND DON'T BELIEVE ANYTHING

PS: Restart of the project had impact even on this initial description :-)

RTX Remix

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The Pond: First encounter's compatibility with RTX Remix is:

Status: Not Compatible
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Development progress 27/09/2015 - The story

Sep 26 2015 News

Hey there,

today, no pictures, unfortunately. I am away from my desktop PC on laptop, so I don't have the right equipment to prepare anything visually attractive for uploading. Anyway, I have decided to post update and don't wait for Tuesday with it.

I would like to add short insight in the development of the story this time. It may be interesting for you, maybe more than pictures or videos, since it will be about the most important part of the game and it is part of me, in fact.

During last week I have decided to write everyting down and not to bear it just in my head, since I tend to forget things so often. Also I need to organize all the story and fix it finally, in order to be able to invest all my time into programming and art. So I am bringing notepad with me everywhere and organizing my ideas and story, and hopefully next time, it will be "closed case".

I have had some time to work on props, but I clearly didn't meet my goal to finish the shed. But on the other hand, I created story related items and I have good feeling about it.

Personal experience in the story

When talking about the story, I know horror are popular these times and people like to fear when watching TV, playing the games or whatever. Most of us has experienced something frightening. But when you experience something really scary, you wouldn't like to repeat it. Story of the Pond is fictional, with elements from my personal experience.

One of the most intensive experience was sleep paralysis. I will try to describe it for people who didn't experienced it - imagine, you wake up in the night. It doesn't matter what time is it, it can be 1 AM for example. You normally open your eyes and suddenly feel something in the darkness. You want to look at it, but you can't. You cannot move at all. But that's not all. You feel strange presence and pressure in your ears, you feel heartbeats in your ears, but you cannot breath. You try so hard to get some air, but you can't. You just lay in your bed desperately trying to make a sound, call for help. Or move hand. And suddenly, it's gone, it disappears as it appeared.

Trust me, you don't want to try that in real life. I didn't want to go to sleep during the times this was happening. Oh yes, it wasn't just once, it was nearly every few nights for more than month or two. And the best of all was that it wasn't same scenario all the time. One time I was laying in the bed before going to sleep and suddenly I heard steps coming to my bed. Really quickly and then it started as usual. Even when I am writing it right now I am afraid it will come back.

And then there is the story of the Pond. It relies mainly on the fact that the fear is being created in our heads. Zombies, vampires, werewolves are not really scary, we know they don't exist. We are more concerned about things we don't understand, when our mind tricks us or when we see something we can't explain. Even the sleep paralysis wasn't real thing (I suppose it was some state of human body), but it felt real and you are not able to tell what it is.

The game will pull you in and you'll become one with the main character. The game world is not just some freaky scary castle, but it is normal place where you can be anytime. Things that happens can happen to you anytime. And there are no spiders, bats, zombies, skeletons or other "scary" characters.

In the next devlog entry I will present you first character. And first bits of story, which could be told. I have already revealed main story elsewhere before, even here I believe, but it was so general, that it said generally nothing.

Gameplay length

I have decided to make story mode 3-5 hours long. I call this length generally "adult game time". I know that in these days adult people don't have much time for long story games and I personally prefer to finish story game during one or two sessions. This should be exactly The Pond.

I don't want to extend gameplay artificially by putting there non-sense tasks, like finding notes in the forest. All you do in the game is logical and will be related to story. It will be minimum things that you would do and don't have any impact on the story.

Next time

As I promised, next time I will upload some pictures. I hope to be able to finish the shed and I will bring you information about first character with bits of story.