I'm going to talk about Bounty of Wastes
On the advice of friends, peers, and lots of conversations with the anxious part of myself, I have finally committed to writing dev blogs about this thing.
WHAT IS BOUNTY OF WASTES
It's a game and hi I'm Ray, I direct and program it, among other things. It's not my effort alone, I work with a writer, an artist, a musician and a producer, who all make up Five Side Studios. I wanted to give a quick overview about what the game IS since, honestly, its probably the most important thing to cover for the first dev blog. Check out this cool elevator pitch:
Bounty of Wastes is a mecha magic western following a courier service across the hostile wasteland remnants of a technologically advanced empire.
Yeah cool but what does that mean.
Bounty of Wastes is primarily an RPG about exploring, getting cool stuff, and powering up your giant robot, while making friends with the local population of the grey dangerous and sandy landscape we call the Wastes. The game is broken up into three chunks of gameplay:
Settlements
You play member of REGENT, a courier service that exists within the mysterious desert colloquially known as the Wastes. The Wastes are a massively dangerous area filled with hyper evolved, hyper aggressive creatures, that unknowingly defend the ruins that exist throughout the sand. Deciding the risk was worth the reward, many settlements exists upon the Wastes, highly fortified to protect the researchers, treasure hunters, or bandits who founded them.
Settlements such as Keen City are where you can exist to prepare for expeditions, purchase useful items from local merchants, and build relationships with the various residents by taking on courier contracts for various tasks across the Wastes. These can include bringing food and water to a neighboring settlement, or recovering something valuable from one of the lesser known ruins. Either way, doing contracts for the residents in settlements will improve your relationship with them, letting you access their own personal storyline while providing you with benefits aiding you during Delves or Expeditions.
Speaking of which,
Expeditions
Crossing the Wastes is dangerous, deadly, and most people don’t do it, which is why they hire you to do so.
An Expedition consists of traveling to an intended destination on the Wastes, while managing resources and dealing with unexpected events. Starting an Expedition will prompt you to setup your cargo with the resources you expect to need, requiring you to balance this decision with having enough cargo space to carry your contracted cargo or whatever valuables you might find along the way.
Traveling across the Wastes with your Truck is where you’ll access new settlements, ruins and other locations. Time passes as you drive across the Wastes, and therefore resources such as fuel and food are consumed as you travel. Along the way, you may find another settlement to restock at, or bandits who wish to restock from you; maybe you find ruins that you wish to explore, or terrible creatures that block your way. You’ll have to make decisions on how to deal with these situations with respect to your ability to survive on the Wastes, as your supplies are not infinite even though there might be a lot to do and see.
Now to the part where you pilot a giant robot.
Delves
This is the core gameplay segment of Bounty, and where the Settlement and Expeditions sections feed into - Delves task you with exploring old ruins or dangerous landscapes and defending yourself from aggressive security or giant monsters. You can find these Delves all over the Wastes, through self exploration, contracts, or sometimes having them thrust upon you.
One of the unique qualities of the courier service Regent is that it is made up by several Knight operators; Knight are 10-15 meter talk mecha suits that are one of the few ways to deal with the threats across the Wastes.
During delves, you pilot these Knights in a hybrid real time/turn based framework. Outside of combat, you are free to roam around, collect treasures, read old logbooks and discover secrets hidden in the decrepit facilities you visit.
When a threat appears, you enter combat. You have full control over moving your Knight, including the ability to raise your shield to block attacks or use your booster to avoid danger. If you wish to attack, either with a sword, gun or any of the various spells in the game, you enter a command menu to do so, allowing you to precisely select which action to take and preview where it will happen and what it will do. Governing these actions is a Heat gauge; while you can perform many actions in a short amount of time if you wish, you will build up heat with each move, eventually maxing it out and preventing any further actions from being taken.
If you are able to dodge or defend within a few frames of being hit by an attack, you’ll trigger a PERFECT REACTION - time will stop, allowing you time to react to the enemy attack with any action available to you in your command menu, PLUS, this action will not increase your current heat. Its a free move!
If your eyes glazed over during this long block of text I don’t blame you, future blogs will be a lot more concise - I wanted to start from somewhere to give context for my madness I’ll be displaying in text form.
TLDR: Get a contract, drive to the location, complete the contract, return, make your mech better, do it again.
Oh and theres a big main storyline that goes along with this but I’ll talk about that another time.
Thanks for reading i love you
Ray