nomatterstudios

I played Journey recently. It's a linear game and perhaps one of the most inspiring, memorable games I've played in recent times. I make that point because I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity. However, I understand that replay is important too. It's something we've been mindful of as we develop.

With Prey for the Gods we want players to feel their choices matter and that the consequences are just as important. The player steps foot onto a frozen world without anything but the clothes on their back. It's up to you to decide where you go as the start location won't always be the same. Dynamic weather, day/night cycles and enemies that are hunting you keep the moment-to-moment gameplay intense. From there you'll need to find gear, weapons, and make your way through the island to find the giants that reside here. You'll need to explore ruins, caves, and murals that the fallen heroes before you have left to piece together just what is going on here. Boss battles are up to you as they are non-linear you wont' be forced into how and when to take them on. Looking at FTL, and DayZ we found that the emergent game play was what caused us to come back again and again. We really want your play through to be different than your friends. So when you explain how you played the game it is your own unique story.

The climbing tech is by far the toughest. It touches everything, AI, physics, tools, art, animation, game design, you name it. There are so many moving parts with a boss and player all interacting and animating. Chien has put a ton of time into this system and we are excited with what we have accomplished so far. However, we still feel there is a good amount of work to be done. One part of the system that could use more attention is the animations of the climbing, which is a good reason we are really looking into more animation support.

We started Prey for the Gods initially with the idea to have a battle with one boss, one character. So from that SotC quickly became a game we looked at. Having been a character artist for so long it was a dream job to even begin to attempt something like that. As for spiritual successor, Polygon mentioned that when they posted our game play video. It certainly is flattering but also terrifying. We know there's expectations when something like that is mentioned. We hope being transparent as possible, engaging our fans, and listening to feedback will help with that.

We made sure that before coming to Kickstarter we had a solid vertical slice of the game to play. We needed to prove it to ourselves and others that this is possible. Part of that process was building out the tech that the game is based on and figuring out just how long certain things would take to make. This allowed us to come up with a schedule for development we felt pretty confident we could hit based on actual development time and not assumptions. I think many other projects that come to the table with just an idea and some concept art or sketches are gonig to be risky as they haven't tested their ideas by actually developing them. A lot can change from a planning stage where the sky is the limit to a development stage where there are many hard limits.

Up vote that answer plz. GunslingerBara is dead on.