Universal Wilderless - Open world fantasy wilderness

Hi my name is Rob and I created two open world adventure games based on a fantasy world I created when I was a kid - Nimian Legends BrightRidge and Nimian Legends Vandgels.

I really enjoyed working on both games and all the feedback from players. I learned a lot making them - what I did right and what could be better - and I wanted to figure out a way to make a new game that tried to overcome the problems I had. I’m a solo developer and I wasn’t always able to create as much as I wanted, add as many features as I wanted, or polish things as well as I could.

There were also big issues technically that can cause problems for indie devs. The big one was that the technology used changes very fast. Each year there were new versions of Unity (the game engine I use), MacOS, Xcode, iOS and more. Changes to this ecosystem can easily break what you’ve been working in, and a large part of the production time was just keeping up with these changes.

So for my next game I thought about ways I could solve these problems. I already had a name - Wilderless - and an idea - an even larger open world that could surprise me as well as players. Even though my last two games were relatively large open worlds, there were some mountains in the skybox in Vandgels that were just pretty pictures. Players, and myself, wanted to go there. I wanted to make sure in Wilderless that if you can see it, you can go there, no matter what you’re looking at. And of course I wanted to make a game with a lot of love. So I made a few decisions.

I decided to start a new game from scratch so that I could use all of the latest software and features. This also let me keep up with updates and test them as they happen to try and minimize new technology breaking things. I also decided to make the game very modular, building complexity out of carefully selected individual pieces so that I can trouble shoot things easier. I didn’t want to throw out everything I had already built, so I have been taking the pieces that worked in the last game - scripts, objects, ideas - and porting them to the new one. And where things were not so great In the last ones -animation, camera controls etc - I’ve been building new systems to replace them.

I also decided to release Wilderless in phases. The first phase is a wilderness landscape photography sim - just you, the world, and your trusty Obskura camera. I planned out ten phases spread over a two year period. This way I can focus on each part of the world -land, animation, animals, weather - one at a time and give them the polish it deserves. And by releasing it in phase one I can help support its development. Working for 3 years then releasing a game in one shot has been a lot harder to manage,and I think this new approach will help me make the world I have been trying to make.

There are also a few surprises planned that I won’t talk about quite yet, but I have been working on them for almost ten years and I am very excited to bring something that I hope will be a new experience.

Anyways I just wanted to introduce myself and the game. I am aiming to launch phase 1 in early 2020.so far I have managed to get a large part of it ready in about 2 months so , even though yo can never be absolutely sure of game development deadlines, I am very encouraged and happy with the progress. I’ll be posting some screenshots mostly captured form the game running on my 2017 iPad Pro.

If you read this, or part of it, thanks for that and also a big thank you to everyone who has been so supportive over the last few years, including Touch Arcade who has set up these great forums where we can share our work, and learn about the great games other people are making

 

Wilderless in motion. I’m adding even more options so that you can customize

Now it’s my turn to tell you to rest I bet you have a lot on the go. Thanks for stopping by and for being so encouraging. I feel really good about this game and It feels like yesterday I was posting my first post on touch arcade

 

There will be . Im working on it now. In the last games the first person view was an afterthought, so almost everything you did would pull you out of this. For Wilderness I'm using a brand new camera system, and I wanted to make sure I incorporate first person view early on so I can work with it Thanks for mentioning it, and if you have any other suggestions please let me know. Im building this game piece by piece and I want to answer some of the previous game problems in it.

 

I have been thinking about having horses. I know I’d like to have riding in general. Either way thanks for bringing this up now because it will help me add first person view in these cases

 

Thanks. It’s coming along really well.

 

Hey Truncana just wanted to let you know I added in first person view. You have the option to show or hide your body, and add an aiming reticle for people who get motion sickness in fast fpv, as well as turn motion blur in or off, although motion blur on slows down the frame rate depending on your device.

Here’s a short video of first person view in Wilderless in action

 

Me too - I like hearing that

 

There actually isn’t but that is a very good idea and I think it’s easy to implement. I’ll add it to my list right now. There’s a list of things that I feel the world needs for the first phase - basically great caharactwr controls and options, a beautiful landscape, and a good camera system. This is the kind of usability improvements I’m looking for - thank you

Ps great eye catching that from the video - I didn’t think anyone looked at it that closely

 

Your ideas are always super welcome - you e been so much help in getting the word out for vandgels and BrightRidge. I’m having a beta soon and the first release will really be a walking simulator with a very very big world, much larger than BrightRidge and vandgels combined, and a camera. It will probably feel quit empty for a few phases but I think the animal phase and the people phase will bring a lot to the world, and I have a big surprise in store for all of these phases including phase one, which I’ll talk about very soon

 

Sea Level



Im adding a lot more options to control the world around you in Wilderless. I don’t know how to add middimg to a mobile game, so I want you to be able to control as much as possible and have fun with that - like your own little wilderness playground you can change the sea level so flooding areas or leaving them bare, which can dramatically change the landscape.

 

The ultra resolution option will slow down most devices but you can use it to great effect in Photo Mode, and choose to have a watermark or not. This one if from my 2017 iPad Pro. I’m working hard to make sure that the environment feels natural. I don’t design games with level design in mind. Instead a try to reveal something that feels real and then let you, and me, discover it. One of the big things in Wilderless is I wanted a way to make the discovery surprise me as much as you and I’ll say more about that soon

 

Just to let you know, I added invert Y and invert X to the controls, as well as the option for a more standard height jump for people who prefer that I’m all about the options. Thanks for the suggestion.