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My fresh look: you said this game is a Sci-Fi game. But your main hero is not from sci-fi, but from ... fairy-tale. So you need to change your main hero from "alive flower pot" to .. "smart" robotic container for plants (with alive flower), something like Astrobot or Wall-E (with small spider legs) which main goal is to preserve his flower alive. This also gives him motivation to talk with other robots - they share same message-protocols

Im getting Transistor vibes for backstory and history understanding, and I just wanna warn that a lot of people playing Transistor werent the same people who read pages and pages of text in games, so the story didnt come across so well to many people.

Are the main 4 robots' names permanent, or placeholders?

This is very cool but I don't see where knowledge based progression comes into this. Can explain some ideas for that?

First time seeing your game - just got to say I love the look and concept! Knowledge-based progression is brilliant and I can’t wait to see what the means for this project!

Your monitor screen with all the effects look so dope!

The environmental interactions you come up with usually look quite interesting.

This game really have depth.

Impressive stuff! But the camera is still clipping through walls here and there. How I do it in my game is, calculate the near clip plane -> from each corner of that plane, shoot a ray towards the target -> the ray that returns the shortest distance, you need to use to offset and move near clip plane so it dont collide any more. ( For more precision I shoot an extra between each corner, so 8 rays in total. )

When you said "Excel" I immediately thought you'd import the CSV files into data tables because that's already right there...

Probably too late, but consider looking into Ink and its Unreal plugin for the chats and general story management. It allows storing separate files like your excel data table setup, but is a bit more flexible and would require less bouncing around programs. Ink also comes with the benefit that it can track global variables like story states and whether or not the player has been exposed to specific sections of the story, etc.

V1 ULTRAKILL MENTION RAHHHHHH

There is no game yet. Its just a whole set of tools and mechanisms. Time to put stuff togather into a game. Good luck

Make it ghibli like sci fi to bridge the misunderstanding ❤

i NEEEEEEEEED dynamic cam tutorial it is so good

Can't wait to see the little cute potted plant discover robot-made horrors beyond human comprehension ☺

btw is will there be a reason to use the lily pads instead of just swimming, maybe giving swimming a stamina bar would incentivise to use the lily pads

Good to see the sci-fi elements come into place! And I love the soft exposure method you're going for with the chat logs, will forever be a sucker for those types of games ahah

As a nerd I do not like the bulging of the screen. You described it as chromatic aberration. Adding that makes sense but I think the effect you choose does more than that. It looks like it was intended for CRT monitors and not pixel matrix displays lice LED/LCD. To me who puts a lot of value in these things its a little immersion breaking to have the wrong kind of artifact on a medium. I love the game but I felt compelled pointing that out :)

Outer wilds is the best game ever made. Second to none and uts not even arguable.

This looks cool but I think it can be really hard to read so mutch text when it's tillted like this because of the camera 😅

Hey, have you thought about using JSON? as you can use the engine json module to retrieve data from keys and it is more user friendly

If youre looking for more inspiration about knowledge based games, you should play Rain World. Its like no game thats ever been made before and has a lot of things to learn from.

Wow this is the first time i ever gave the first like to a video! Awesome vodeo btw!

Awesome solution! And gratz on inventing your own stuff! I found your video in my own struggles with ropes and some unique needs :P Im looking forward for the grind :D

The first 500 people to use my link skl.sh/nerdchomp12241 will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare premium!

I thought it was a cozy 3D puzzle platformer similar to little kitty big city about a cute plant bringing back nature to a post apocalyptic world. I'm on onboard no matter what you go for

This game reminds me of Arise ....

To me, it was a game with a cutesy aesthetic and a simple story, about solving slightly easy puzzles one after the other. I always wondered how those puzzles were gonna work though, as the mechanics didn't seem to offer "infinite possibilities" to me. I also thought it could have some management gameplay like Pikmin. I would've never imagined it had a sci-fi setting and knowledge based puzzles if it wasn't for this video.

I might have some suggestions on what you can add as danger elements, if you are looking to add more: things that want the nectar You've got a bee, so a logical extension of that would be other critters, ranging from small to your little pot man sized, that want the nectar as well. Perhaps some of them consume it in its raw, gloopy form and you need to find ways to prevent that so you can use it yourself, and others hoard the crystalized version for reasons best known to them and you need to prevent them from snatching it, or reclaim it through some way. Some could even harm the player if they get too close without being careful. I know you've said you don't want any enemies, but I think you could still design this in a way as to make them behave less like an enemy and more like a part of the world, just another obstacle. But either way, good progress, just discovered and binged your entire devlog series today, I'll be adding this to my keep-an-eye-on list!

Game Development Document, this helps to keep the game focused. It will also prevent feature creep.

Is jusy like stray, i would enjoy it

Having seen a few of your devlogs here and there I wasn't expecting *at all* the game to be knowledge based! This is exciting for me personally, but yeah I didn't get that vibe at all from what you've shown / way you talked about it so far (but I may be missing or misremembering stuff). I don't think there's an issue with the cozy adjacent look, especially that early in dev, that thing will be more impacted by what you choose show from the finished product imo. Even for the difficulty it's probably not that useful to worry about that before having people test the game. But yeah I guess it's more that the plan wasn't clearly communicated at first, and the assumption from that kind of game naturally goes towards collectathon. Though it's a good thing it happened now, would be pretty bad to realise at the last moment that people expect something completely different!! But I mean, Tunic sold itself by being Zelda first or Animal Well a Metroid. Whatever your game ends up being, it'll probably be clearer how to talk about it when it's more complete.

is this ultrakill lore reference? (also the robot drawing concept too similar with v1)

Looking toward to play this game

Hello, I'm curious what the pot character is. Is he like a cartoony animated pot? A robot pot ? A living pot ? A plant that lives in a pot? If I look at the robot , the pot and robot don't seem to come from the same world. Which might be intentional , if you want or allow I would like to make some sketches for the pot character :) I'm so curious in what your view is.

I have no issue with your new elevator pitch but i found that the wording/phrasing didn't catch my attention, but as with most things in game dev, it will get more polished as development progresses. 👍

I'm so glad you're able to see your vision for the game a lot better but I found it quite overwhelming hearing all the extra bits and left feeling confused as to where exactly you're taking it. How are you going to convey this to the player in game and in your marketing?

For me, Nectar is a cozy puzzle adventure game, like Lil Gator or A Short Hike. Or maybe like Comet's Wayfaring Odyssey, But I'm open for different genre

There's a part of game design that is not just making a game for yourself. It seems like people were clearly excited and follow along for what they thought the game was going to be, you are scratching the itch for them. You already have a fanbase ready for those similar expectations. It's ok to pivot once you find your audience.

I was worried that this video would be about changing your game to meet people's expectations. I'm glad you're staying true to your own intention, I think it will be a better game because it's yours, and not just the average of your viewers' ideas.

I already thought the game was interesting when i still thought it would be the cozy puzzle type but I like the way you've described it a lot more. I think knowledge based progression is awesome and Outer Wilds is one of my top 3 favorite games of all time. I hope Nectar turns out well :D

I agree with the rest, just do something else while keeping the mechanics

Im glad you made this video because i had really been worried there was going to be no tooth but the route your going is great. I personally love the art style and the contrast

I like the inspirations, however I'm not seeing the vision quite yet. Maybe the playable character should match the world more? Maybe it needs a robotic motif to match. To me, it seems more like a pot brought to life in a magical world like in a goofy collectathon game than a futuristic, barren world of a past war. In that kind of world, I'd imagine broken, robotic parts used for platforming like say, a big, metal hand as an elevator to go up and down. Or even the tightrope could be a cable sticking out of broken bots? It could make the sole flower on the character stand out in a metallic world devoid of plant life, as that's what I picture.

What is Nectar in my opinion: I don't see the sci-fi part in it. I thought, it would be a linear discovery game with, maybe, the bigger goal of reaching a tower, for example. Or maybe you need to help someone or a group of species, maybe a group of bees, and other smaller wildlife to survive or getting rescued, with a little bit of story. Similar to the game 'It takes two'.

do what you want, so it isn't what everyone expects! this game will be great, no matter what!

After watching some of your early devlogs.. I think this is more than just that your channel viewers are misunderstanding you. In your first devlog, you mention that you've been working on the game for 6 months, and only recently had the idea of nectar as a game mechanic even occurred to you. You got the game to a pretty incredible visual level.. without having prototyped ANY gameplay mechanics. You don't once mention in those early vlogs that you wanted any of this (robots, knowledge based progression, etc.) to be the case. And I don't mean to diminish the work you've done. The game you've made so far is very pleasing to the eye and looks very fun! I just think it'd benefit from you sitting down and making sure you know what it is that your game is going to be, and making sure all the elements of the game, visual and otherwise, align with that idea.

One idea.. change your main character from a sentient pot, to a little plant tending robot *carrying* a pot, with the goal of keeping the flower alive.

For the level design issue. Play a game that is similar to yours that you like. Most obstacles are pretty much the same throughout games but with a different coat of paint or how the thing is executed. Even enemies are just animated obstacles. Is there really a difference between a wall shooting arrows and a guy shooting arrows? So play a game that you like that inspires you to make this game and see what their levels are like. Take a couple obstacles and put them in your level tailored to your mechanics. Then play your level and see if you enjoy it. The best advice is don’t think too hard on it. If you think of something fun, roll with it and don’t question it. As you make it, you’ll find out whether it’s a good idea or just good on paper. I am making a game where you are a mouse running through mazes. I am currently working on an aquarium level where you are under the sea running through tubes like in the movie Meg. The underwater facility with the glass window the shark bites that the little girl is looking through. Anyways I made a bunch of tubes that connect with eachother and was like “ok now what?” I had no idea how the level would go. Then I thought, it would be funny if the character could see the end of the level right next to them but can’t reach it. Ok I got my start and end. I thought of one idea after another. I put one tube that is a dead end but runs over the whole maze giving the player a Birds Eye advantage of the level. I thought it was clever. I was just putting random ideas I thought was fun down then at the end figuring out a way to connect them all. In the end I really like the path I made. Some levels I have a clear idea and blueprint. Some I just wing it. Think where you want the player to go. Up, down, left, right. How you want him to go. Jump up platforms? Fall down a crumbling platform? Just let the ideas flow. And as you put things down, you’ll get ideas for other things. It will come to ya.