Welcome, one and all, to another Decision: Red Daze Development log!
This time we are shining the light on the map, and delving a little bit into the development process that went into making the biggest zombie-blastin’ playground ever seen in the Decision series!
The map is one of the most important aspects of any game - be it a narrative experience, a role playing game, or a first person shooter - the locations you visit and the surrounding ambience set the mood for the entire duration of the game. Knowing that, we spent a long, lonnnngggg time on the idea generation process long before we even started developing the game map, and feel this is our best one yet.
So welcome… to the Dust Bowl!
The first iteration of the game’s map was completely different from what you’d see now. The play area was originally four times bigger than the one we have now, with the amount of settlements being similar in structure but having less functionality.
We spent some time working on it before we realized it was wayy too large, and poorly affected the dynamics and flow of the game. In theory, an average session should have been enough for you to comfortably set up your squad of survivors, explore the surrounding area and scavenge for some loot, then stumble upon a new settlement and capture it. At that time in development, this was the element that took the most effort from the team, and even then, took the greatest amount of time. We had to completely redesign the map, and now the Dust Bowl feels wayyyyyy more comfortable!
We placed everything you see in the game manually, with great care to how you guys would enjoy our game. The game's loot, survivors and regular enemies aren't attached to specific locations, and instead they're scattered relatively evenly across the map, scaled to the player's progress across the Dust Bowl. Since the development team consists of only two people, not counting the screenwriters and actors, this distribution of survivors, loot and ordinary enemies keeps the development process more streamlined, and helps us create the game we want to make, and tell the stories we want to tell!
And stories are what we’re all about.
Every location you see in the wasteland has a unique and enthralling backstory behind it, and we simply CANNOT wait to tell you about them any longer.
So, starting today, we start telling the story of the Dust Bowl: each week, we will take a location from the Decision: Red Daze wasteland, tell you more about the backstory of the place, or maybe its’ use in fighting against the menacing monster army!
Thank you so much for your support, and we hope to bring you much more content like this in the near future!
