Devlog 3: Befriending Creatures

Hey there!

In this month's Devlog, we'll go over the basics of Taming.

While exploring the multiple Regions of the game, you'll find various creatures, some hard to miss, others well hidden.

You can see different creatures zooming around, crawling in the grass, hiding in plain sight...

In this game, most creatures will be tamed through completing puzzles that directly relate to the creature's abilities or personality. Some may require you to find specific objects, behave a certain way in battle against them, play a mini-game with them, or even complete long questlines. 

Some creatures might also have similarly unique conditions to evolve into more powerful ones.

How does one fish out a lilypad?

Spoiler Alert!

We don't want to spoil the fun of figuring out how to tame any of the dozens of creatures, but if your curiosity is too strong, read the following section at your own risk!

Here's a concrete example of how to tame one of the creatures in the first region of the game: Sqweep!

A poor Sqweep crying

Multiple Sqweep appear near a cliff in the region where your adventure begins. Running into any of them will trigger a battle to begin. During battle, Sqweep will exclusively use its Auto-Move, Cry. (You can read more about the Battle System in our 1st Devlog here!

So, how does one tame Sqweep?

In-combat sprite of Sqweep

You must use a creature whose Auto-Move does not deal damage, so as to not hurt and scare Sqweep away. After a few moments, it will warm up to you and you can have it join your team! A very clever player might also find that constantly Switching between Creatures of their Party before their Auto-Moves finish charging will also work as a method of not hurting Sqweep!

This wraps up the Devlog for this month! We hope you enjoyed reading it and are looking forward to find the unique ways to befriend and evolve all the creatures in the game!

See you next month for another round!

Devlog 2: Establishing the Art Direction

Hello again! We hope you enjoyed our last Devlog entry.

This time, we’re talking about art and the various steps that ultimately led to our current style! We’ll be using Plantopus, the very first creature we designed as an example. 

Before anything else, we needed a creature to start off of. 

A quick (and awful) sketch based on loose ideas then came to life. A land octopus infected by a parasitic plant, slowly altering its behavior pattern and abilities. It needed to be cute, look a bit slow in every sense of the word and a bit unnatural.

Plantopus V 0.1

It was not great, but it was good enough and hopefully it would get better.

We used complementary colors to clash a bit with the plant elements, put the beak on the face making it a bit reminiscent of a small parrot (everyone knows parrots are absolutely adorable) and have leaves/fins growing out like ears, just like a dumbo octopus. 

Plantopus V 0.2

With better proportions and a clearer vision for the creature, it was time to explore rendering styles.

It needed to be adaptable for a pixel art style while keeping a cute and childlike aesthetic.

Plantopus V 0.3

Attempt A we went for more cartoon proportions, a darker but very steady linework and watercolor coloring, reminiscent of children's books.

Attempt B we tried a thicker outline and made it look sketchy, like a drawing. 

While the 2 first were more unique and striking for a creature collector game, both wouldn't render very well in a pixel art style and made it look like the creatures weren’t real within the game world.

For this reason, we chose attempt C, who still had a very happy, colorful vibe with the thick colorful outlines and the soft shading.

And now,

how did it translate to pixel art?

Plantopus V 1!

We’d like to hear your thoughts!

Thank you so much for reading,

We hope you enjoyed the process, please stay tuned for more news!

Devlog 1: Real-Time Combat?

 Hi there! Thank you for your interest for Creature Collector.

For this month's newsletter, here's a deep-dive into combat and progression mechanics!

Out in the world, you may find creatures wanting to test you, or trainers interested in a friendly battle. Trainers can bring a maximum of 5 creatures into battle at once and switch between them at any time. Store an infinite amount using the boarding service.

In this game, creatures battle in real-time, supplemented by your commands. They use instinctual Auto-Moves at fixed intervals based on their Speed stat. Auto-Moves hype up creatures, generating Energy points. As a Trainer, you have the ability to teach Moves that you know to your creatures and call them out in battle, consuming the Energy points to create all sorts of powerful effects.

Switching creatures can be a powerful tool to turn the tide of battle, but beware, as opposing creatures still progress their Auto-Move cooldown while the switch happens, meaning switching will usually guarantee an Auto-Move and Energy Point to the opponent.

To tap into more of your creatures’ potential, you must defeat Boss Trainers to increase your Trainer Level. As your Trainer Level increases, so will your Creatures’ levels. New creatures you tame or find are instantly raised to your current level, meaning the game has no  “experience points” grind.

Opposing creatures will scale dynamically to match you. While some areas of the game will have minimum and maximum levels they can reach, most content will align with your level, and opponent trainer teams will vary depending on your progress. You are free to tackle areas in any order you like, or make multiple playthroughs to see how different orders play out. Is the Boss Trainer of an area too hard? Try exploring a different one, discovering new Creatures and Moves along the way that will allow you to strategize differently! The content you skip will scale and stay relevant for when you come back!

After defeating all the Bosses, you’ll be able to challenge World Class Trainers, for a chance at becoming the most accomplished trainer in the world!

On that note, We really hope this gave you more insight on the design philosophy of our game and sparked interest on one of its main system!

Thank you so much for reading,

Stay tuned for more devlogs like this one and for more news on the upcoming demo!