We are making our most recent playable demo downloadable for #LudoNarraCon 2020, which means you can play it at home! When we’ve shown it at real-life events, there are some common questions that we are asked, so we decided it’s probably convenient to have a lil’ post with some of our most Frequently Asked Questions... Answered.
(Note: We’re putting this up a few hours before the demo goes live - you'll be able to access it for about a week, starting from Friday April 24th, at 10:00 AM PT.)
Here we go!
Is the game going to be fully voiced?
Yes! The beauty of a demo is that we’re allowed to show our game when it’s still a work-in-progress. Only some lines in the current playable demo are voiced, but our current plan is that all characters will be fully voiced in the final game.
Some of the other things we’ll be doing before launch are more art passes to increase the beauty (if it is possible, amirite?), a UI design pass, and there are still a few more characters who aren’t in this demo! We have some work left to do on Wayward Strand, but we hope this demo gives you an idea of how it all is going to come together. We’re very proud of it :)
When is the game coming out?
This is a hard question to answer. We want to bring you Wayward Strand as soon as we can of course. You’ll probably see lots of indies answering this question with a little bit of hesitation - we don’t want to let you down, or give the wrong date, but as we’ve seen this year sometimes stuff comes up, gets delayed etc. Our hope is to have Wayward Strand ready for you within a year, but a lot of it depends on boring things like funding and production timelines and etc.!
What platforms will Wayward Strand be available on?
At the moment, we can only confirm Steam, however since beginning development, our back end has been set up to port the game to consoles, and mobile too. This question depends quite a bit on what our funding situation ends up being - just part of what being an indie dev is these days!
Is the game multiplayer?
Wayward Strand is fully single-player - with no in app purchases or skins and no loot boxes!
While it’s intended as a single-player experience, it is a lovely game to play with someone else! Either playing it together with someone (how nice!), or each of you playing it at the same time, or during the same week as some friends can enrich your experience quite a lot.
With so much ground to cover and so many characters to meet, it’s gonna take a lot of dedication to uncover all of the events and conversations in Wayward Strand yourself. Playing at the same time as a friend allows you to compare your experiences, and tip each other off to interesting, funny or curious things that they might have missed, and you might even have the knowledge to answer some questions they haven’t resolved.
We hope a lot of the themes in Wayward Strand will spark conversations, too, so playing with friends or family is a great idea. Likewise, we have a Discord where you’re totally encouraged to nerd out about Wayward Strand - just use the spoiler tag!
What do you DO in Wayward Strand?
There’s no wrong way to play Wayward Strand. Because all of our characters will be moving around the ship and following their own schedules, you’re not meant to be able to catch every conversation or event that happens - just like you wouldn’t be able to in the real world!
You can stick to a particular character like glue if you want to, or float around and talk to everyone. You can even eavesdrop on conversations if that’s more your style. During conversations you’ll have opportunities to answer questions, as well as opportunities to ask them, or just to chat!
There are questions, and conversations which may give you some more leads to follow on particular curious things you come across, learn or overhear. You can also just enjoy a character’s company Wayward Strand is about wandering through this world and these characters’ stories. While you can’t win or lose Wayward Strand, your actions are important to the other characters (whether you know it or not!)
We’re designing Wayward Strand to be a pretty chilled out experience to play. We’ve had lots of people exasperatedly tell us that they’re going to try to learn EVERYTHING on board - and, good luck to them! Play it a dozen times! But, the game is designed to be a pleasant and lovely experience if you just play it through once and follow your nose, too. Kinda like curling up with a good book in your favourite chair. Toasty.
Who is making the game?
We are Ghost Pattern! We are a small studio (soon to be a small co-op!) based in Melbourne, Australia. There are currently six people on our core team, and we also work with a lot of other collaborators in Melbourne on things like art and consultation. There’s a full list of the credits so far in the demo, definitely check it out!
If you’d like to follow us on Twitter, we’re on there as @WaywardStrand, and below is a list of some of our individual accounts:
- @MaizeWallin - Maize Wallin
- @RussellDilley - Russell Dilley
- @GhostTownGoldie - Marigold Bartlett
- @jason_bakker - Jason Bakker
- @Kalonica_ - Kalonica Quigley
- @aspenforster - Aspen Forster
And a special mention to Georgia Symons (@biscuitpolicy) - she’s an amazing writer that has contributed a ton of writing to Wayward Strand, as well as dramaturgy and voice-over direction!
How can I stay in touch?
Definitely give us a wishlist here and subscribe, we’re going to aim to do some fairly regular Steam Blogs going ahead. None of us are social media experts, we’re game developers, but we will do our best!
We do tweet fairly regularly too - either about our own game or about other cool indie projects we have our eye on, so that’s an interesting place to sign up. Likewise, we have a Facebook page and have launched a Discord too - come and hang out! Furthermore, you can sign up for our newsletter at waywardstrand.com
And if you have more in-depth questions or queries, we’re happy to receive them at [email protected].
Hope you enjoy the demo!