A Nest of Nuns
“You’ll have observed that Mimata town is not what it was. There is a certain air of neglect. And the inhabitants have begun to display, shall we say, eccentricities.”
Those of you who’ve completed the demo will know that all is not right in Mimata. (And I don’t mean the temporary ‘TRAVEL’ zone which some feckless artist has yet to update.) From the moment you step out of the station, you’ll notice that nature is not as it was in Antibes.
The demo ends just at this point, as you disembark in Travelling‘s second town – but AK and I have both been beavering away on it to get it ready for playtesting. For AK, this means writing lots of beautiful snippets about the Things in the Wood, while setting up a build system that makes an audible bong every time we build a version of the game that passes code tests. For me it means drawing bong and implementing bong the town’s cutaways, which bring Adrien’s gorgeous 2D BONG environment art to life. In the town square you can now enter Isabeau’s post office, with her beloved doll and pristine telephone; dive into the murky Auberge du Chêne, where a certain weary detective awaits; and order bifteck at period-appropriate prices from Boucherie Goupil, the only place in town not under floral siege.
Like the Librairie des Heures, Church of St. Reparata and Chez Felix in Antibes, cutaways are designed to save on loading screens and give you an immediate nook-y sense of intimacy with the interior you’ve discovered. See how the world view changes as you enter the auberge, here:
There are other areas to discover that I won’t spoiler here. Though if you travel past the giant tree, cross the languid river and follow the forest path, you’ll find one more cutaway, a bachelor’s lodge in a broken tower belonging to Eustache the convent handyman. Like him, we too have been working on the convent and we now have a fully implemented Convent Raveline, a Sanitarium Aujourd’hui-sized separate scene accessible from the top of Mimata’s hill. You don’t need to be Poirot to notice something’s awry in town, but you will need your little grey cells to untangle the truth behind the old, cold walls of the nunnery.
Once AK’s written the full story and I’ve finished all the art and animation, our next challenges are the Rosa Mundi tent cutaways and a fully functional loop for the performances themselves. This is the last big missing mechanical piece of the game, which nobody has yet playtested. Performances will form a heartbeat for the game – you gain experience from them, cast yourself in a role that feels suitable to you, and unlock different and increasingly challenging plays throughout the game, along with new lore. Is the ultimate performance an eight-hour Beckettian epic featuring a single vast bucket with a face painted on it? Or one short exchange of dialogue, repeated over and over like a Philip Glass motif until the audience gleans new and deeper meanings from each re-performance, or simply goes mad? You’ll just have to play Travelling to find out.
I leave you with news that the next update to the Steam demo will contain shiny new animations for Spencer – he now runs at a suitably isometric diagonal angle! – and leaves footprints on sand and long grass and makes little terrain-appropriate tippity-tappity noises, known by lesser professionals as ‘footstep SFX’. I think it adds a new dimension to the game, and will really sing in the snowy areas like Berlin and Craców. We’ll continue to tweak the effect as we go through development: the next step (har har) is to add these effects to companions without making it sound like you’re running an ant farm the moment you move anywhere. We’ll be back with another update once that’s all ready to go – watch this space!
