Development on Sleep Descent has restarted using the Unity engine. With Droplet: States of Matter wrapping up and going on Steam, I figured I should use Sleep Descent as a means of teaching myself another engine so that I can broaden my skillset. Thank you to those who followed the development of this game!
RECENT WORK HIGHLIGHTS:
- Boss Theme - This song plays when encountering a powerful enemy
- Maria Martines article - An article detailing the backstory of the main character
- Leopoldo Martines article - An article on the game’s first companion
- Bogeymanarticle - An article on the game’s first boss
ABOUT THIS PROJECT:
So I started this project around 2016 when I was learning Unreal Engine for the first time. The idea behind it was to create a 3D JRPG involving a girl that was mysteriously transported to the world of dreams. I created a prototype game with an open world setting that turned out alright. However, the constant rewrites to the story and the spaghetti code didn’t quite pan out for me so I decided to put this project on pause. The result was me working on Droplet: States of Matter - a 3D platformer which has seen a lot of development and work put into it. It’s gone very well. If you want to follow development on it, check out the thread for it here.
After building my skills with Droplet, I felt confident once again revisit Dreamwalkers. However this time, I figured it was best to completely start from scratch with new assets and a new story. While I’m still keeping the core idea of a girl being transported to the world of dreams, the game will feature a brand new plot and characters. Despite its setbacks, the game paved the way for a new shared universe consisting of many different short stories and characters documented in the Omniverse Nexus collaborative writing project. I’m still working on the Sleep Descent-related content on the Omniverse Nexus, but you may visit the site here if you wish to explore the Dreamwalkers expanded universe.
THE NEW STORY:
Maria Martines is a young girl that is descended from two different tribes that practiced the sacred art of dreamwalking - the Ahona of Arizona on her grandfather’s side and the Yumekage of the Devil’s Sea in Japan on her grandmother’s side. Her parents Xavier and Jesusita were scientists that sought to understand dreamwalking from a scientific perspective. To do this, they created the dream world Mobius to serve as a testing ground to experiment with dreamwalking powers. Maria and her sister Elvira were taken to Mobius as young children to have their powers evaluated and tested.
While both were exceptionally powerful, Xavier had begun to show favoritism towards Elvira. As Maria had been born with nonverbal autism, she had a difficult time communicating - something which greatly frustrated Xavier. After Jesusita expressed disapproval with his methods, their family began to grow apart. Before they could resolve their differences, Mobius became the battleground for the gods that had begun to wage an apocalyptic war against each other. Jesusita was a casualty in the conflict. Xavier and Elvira went off the grid to continue training their dreamwalking skills in order to one day exact vengeance for Jesusita. However, Maria was sent to live with her grandfather Leo to live a normal life way from dreamwalking.
Many years would pass as Leo continued to look after Maria. However, the same gods that destroyed Mobius also caused a new threat to appear - an all consuming void known as the Rupture which brought forth beings made of pure darkness known as Id. One of these Id mortally wounds Leo, forcing him into reincarnating as a cat. Leo in his new form decides to reintroduce Maria to the world of dreamwalking so that they could prepare themselves for the calamity the world is about to face. Perhaps finding Xavier and Elvira will give some clues as to how to stop the Rupture.
PLAYABLE CHARACTERS:
- Maria Martines - The main character. Despite being mute, she is highly expressive and sports a goofy sense of humor. She wants to uncover the mysteries of her family’s fate.
- Leo Martines - Maria’s grandfather who reincarnated as a cat after being mortally wounded by an Id. He is Maria’s guardian, even in her adulthood.
- Morley Calavera - A spirit mage that serves the Ahona tribe even in death. He resides in the Ahona dream world of Talsohu.
- Daphne - A girl that was transformed into a forest nymph centuries ago. She lives in the Greek dream world of Arcadia.
- Fenrir - The wolf from Norse mythology that is the son of Loki. He is encountered in the world of Jotunheim.
- Elvira Martines - Maria’s sister and dreamwalking prodigy. She serves her father’s will with undying loyalty though she begins to question her father’s motives as his quest for vengeance against the gods begins to go too far.
- Valentine - A knight in shining armor and long forgotten imaginary friend of Maria that defends her childhood dream world of the Toy Box.
- Kakashi - An Id that managed to develop sapience. Being a fan of the work of the Martines’, he joins Maria’s crew so that he can better understand humanity.
GAMEPLAY:
Dreamwalkers: Sleep Descent is a JRPG-inspired game with semi-turned based elements. Every ability in the game has a charge time and cooldown time determined by a set amount of real-time seconds. An ability is cast when the charge time is complete and another ability cannot be used until the cooldown time expires. Multiple abilities have different charge times and cooldowns and thus, one must balance them carefully.
The current prototype supports up to four playable characters at a single time, but I may change this to only two so that battles are a bit more accessible to manage. Either way, I’m looking to build something in depth yet easy to understand and incorporate elements of the fantastical dream worlds.
SCREENSHOTS/VIDEOS:
A prototype of the new battle system I took a while ago. I’m hoping to get new footage in the near future.
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Maria Martines - The new main character. Check out her article on the Omniverse Nexus for extra information right here.
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Another battle scene showing a menu with a list of abilities.
2017 BUILD:
I’m keeping the video footage and download link to the old version of Dreamwalkers up for the time being.
Download 2017 prototype: Dreamwalkers – Krayfish Entertainment
Videos:
Full walkthrough of the prototype:
Test footage of first boss encounter
Test footage of being chased by a dragon (not yet in-game, coming soon!)
Footage of a dungeon involving ball rolling physics:
Test footage of a different type of encounter where you are being chased by an impossible boss
