Science-fantasy worlds and weird creatures

Daisy's Battle Role: Tank!

For Daisy, the number one feeling we wanted to emphasize in gameplay is the feeling of "presence", both for battle and exploration. Daisy takes up a lot of space and anchors the team! When playing as her, the camera even zooms out to help give the sense of a higher viewpoint, and where you place Daisy often determines what areas of the battle map are critical to controlling. Moving her around the battlefield takes some planning and forethought, as there are many routes the others can take that Daisy can't. The tradeoff for these difficulties is that Daisy can control the pace and positioning of fights, both by being the center of attention for enemies, but also by pushing her opponents around.

Stealth & Positioning

Stealth is trickier for Daisy, not only because there's more of her to spot, but also because she's the only playable character who can't walk through tall grass without being seen. She's too tall! She has to stay still if she wants to hide, unlike the others.

Our battles will almost always be stealth-optional. Daisy is designed to provide strong abilities that players are encouraged to use, at the cost of having to work much harder to maintain a fully stealthy approach. Or, when stealth has failed, Daisy can bail her less-sturdy allies out of trouble.

Get Loud!

In the demo, Daisy's large health pool and "Intimidating Roar" have a natural synergy, as she can cause enemies to attack her instead of others. Enemies in Clever Girls keep track of a "threat" value for each player character, which is used for target selection. The total threat an enemy perceives also determines whether or not they start panicking, which causes them to suffer various penalties and make worse tactical decisions. Daisy has the highest "threat" level even before roaring, so it's common that enemies in a tough position near her will freak out. There will definitely be some expansion on these themes in the full game. Imagine having Daisy be a frontliner to push enemies into more vulnerable positions, either due to panic, or by literally sending them flying. The Panic status, and other emotional states that can be inflicted on the poachers, will be expanded in the full game.

Another gameplay concept we wanted to experiment with Daisy was the idea of her shaping the environment (she is an avid gardener, after all). Some areas can only be accessed after Daisy opens them up. We also have all sorts of ideas based on the concept of Daisy enabling mobility and teamwork (ever heard of a "fastball special"?)

We plan to work this idea into exploration too, by giving Daisy chances to move things around and help the others explore. Just don't let her feel left behind when you run off into some place she can't follow. She gets lonely!

Big-Hearted, And Also Just Plain Big

Daisy's damage output isn't as high as you'd expect from a gigantic carnivorous dinosaur. Being a considerate soul, it's obvious she pulls her punches. Maybe once the stakes are raised, with some encouragement, this might change...? We'll just have to wait and see!

What's Next!?

The muttreazik themself is a brain+spinal cord looking thing that sits where a normal brain would be. The body that they grow around themselves in the embryo of an organic species (more on that below) serves as a way to move around and be a person for a while before they die, disperse their spores, and eventually get another body to pilot (with no actual memory of the previous iteration, just encoded information)

No one is particularly sure about how they got this way or how they work at all since their whole life cycle, method of reproduction, and several of their abilities are very nonsensical, unbelievable/impossible, and convoluted. Yet they exist anyway.

Since they are inorganic lifeforms, the leading theory is that they may have actually been *designed* to be living genetic encoders/modifiers long ago before some event or series of events led to them gaining sapience and/or deviating from this original purpose. Muttreazik today are facing a troubling problem with their population and reproduction system, with more of them being born into non-sapient organisms (and therefore being more likely to be non-sapient themselves) due to pressures from the other species on the planet (quarantining dead muttreazik bodies, buring spores, medicines to remove the spores, etc). The whole information-saving/transfer between death and the next body via the spore (aka their "reincarnation" thing) also seems to be breaking down a bit after all this time, but don't worry about it.

They get into the body of the host during their dormant non-sentient spore stage, where they get inhaled and subsequently get into the bloodstream. If that host happens to have eggs, and those eggs happen to get fertilized, then the spore activates and takes the opportunity to hijack the embryo's development according to both the current hosts information (even including stuff from what the host eats!!) and what was encoded into the spore (mainly information on the previous host and how basic stuff like lungs works). This still leads to a mishmash of traits that can be inviable, but with the wonders of technology, that developing worm thing can be taken out if needed to continue the rest of its unpredictable growth safely in a tank of some kind. (the other species' half-hearted attempt to make up for all the preventing-you-guys-from-reprodcing stuff). People have tried, but it seems like the spore will not activate in a tank (so setting up a bunch of donated fertilized eggs for spores to get into wouldn't solve the problem of spores getting into people) . It needs the Blood and to be Inside something Alive I guess. People without eggs can still be carriers, since they can introduce spores through blood, having them stuck to their clothes (they're microscopic), or mainly through sex (the spores like to hang out down there and get into or hitch a ride on sperm, which then comes into contact with an egg).

The muttrreazik gets a body to give them mobility, the ability to think, protection from dessication, and nutrients. On the other end, their development is dangerous for the host and they replace the host's normal offspring, so the relationship is considered parasitic.

Kerik (the guy with the stupid rectangle hat) lives alone, which is verrryyyyyyyyy unusual and potentially unhealthy for a Dorest (recap from some of the stuff that I yalked about in the reproduction post but basically most Drecu need a lot of social and chemical feedback/reinforcement from other Drecu to maintain a stable headspace and physical condition). There is some infrastructure in place for those in his situation where they are currently without a unit, are unable to join a unit, or willingly choose to avoid one-mainly in the form of artificial pheremones/enzymes once can take instead of being around real Drecu and community housing somewhat like a homeless shelter. The stuff he was picking up from the pharmacy was an artificial pheromone mix meant to help with mood and to keep his hair from falling out.

Kerik has a lot of reasons for living alone, mainly his vitiligo and the whole draft-dodging situation he’s in. He was isolated from a young age due to the skin condition since it makes it very hard/basically impossible to communicate with other Drecu on the same level, since their native language uses scale colors being shown in certain shapes and patterns to make up the characters and entire words (as well as some hand gesturing and pheromone exchange to set the mood and tone. Usually, Cerest with obvious physical differences like this are culled in egg or larva stage, but since larva are already without pigment no one noticed until he pupated (and by then he was legally considered a Real Person who they couldn’t just stomp on. They definitely tried their best still, but had to settle for the second best option of making him feel fundamentally alienated and Worse than everyone).

unfortunately for them, Kerik showed a propensity for math and science that was better than their clutchmates, so he gave himself a reason to be kept around. The guy was on basement larva care duty and not allowed to be seen by other members of his own unit or any of the other ones, and was constantly assured that he was Built Wrong, didn’t deserve to see the sun, and again only around because he’s very smart and could be helpful to the unit that is graciously not killing him or trading him off to some work camp or factory. Thanks to some makeup and virtual/remote tests and meetings, and sheer spite, he was able to rise to the top of the Ret class he was born into, shown by the single large rectangle permanently inked onto his forehead. Then he ended up fleeing the Empire anyway because he got infected and became a Conduit (and by law had to join the military). He did NOT want to get conscripted or figure out what the real big dog upper classes would do to him when their full attention was suddenly on him, so he used what he’d learned handling identity documents at his old job to slip around the border before it was Really locked down like it is currently and live in the SEZ.

So basically, he’s avoiding other Drecu because 1)most of them think he’s sub-Cerest based on the way he looks 2) he’s a contrarian who hates authority and who has never felt like belonging in a unit as they are now and 3) if any cerest found out he fled his unit/military duties in the empire he’d be big time screwed, and even more screwed if a human authority figure found out he was a recent immigrant who is not living in a designated Cerest Area. Kerik would’ve kept walking as quickly as possible away from these guys if he hadn’t accidentally auto-invited them to talk/greet him back with his antenna (decentralized nervous system, so they literally did that on their own. That part was probably shocked/excited to see another Dorest..the rest of him not so much.)

Many Cerest chose to live outside of their typical Imperial land long before any conflict and don’t support the current Imperial ideals. However, Imperial sentiments and structures still exist on the SEZ/DRSS side of the border though the units who live there now (who were trapped during the border redraw/closure that happened postwar or were just displaced to another area that wasn’t typically imperial land thanks to the conflict . ) Enclaves and of Cerest in the DRSS are just repurposed internment camps, with all of their species-specific food/housing needs concentrated there to keep them all in one place since they’re the “enemy species”. Enclaves in the SEZ are not the strict living areas of all Cerest there since there are more scattered housing/food resources (though it is still very very hard for a Cerest of either kind to live away from those areas thanks to the scarcity). All this to say there’s Cerest in the SEZ and DRSS who are normal and there’s also ones who act like they’re still in the Empire, which is what caused this interaction to go south.

Btw, the group of four strangers is an Arch (the Rox who just stands there aura farming) and three of xeir sires (the clear favorite who does all the “taking” and the two lackeys who are carrying the group’s stuff). That’s why they have the same size, number, and shape of forehead tattoo (though the size/shape/number thing doesn’t automatically mean a Drecu is part of the reproductive group, there can be people with that same Diamond who aren’t sires/arches, they have clothing and jewelry to make the distinction. Ermmmm I’d need to make a clothing post though lol)

The Dorest with the Diamond on xeir forehead is speaking with [[ to signify xei are in an upper class (Kes, represented by the diamond shape), while Kerik is speaking in [ which is what lower classes use (Ret (Rectangle, and what Kerik was part of) and Tel (represented by a pentagon)). Var, which is the military class, would be shown using a < shape and is spoken by the Var as well as some in the Sundyne class (like Maro and Rinshi! ) but the Sundyne also have their own separate language they use. All the different ways to speak are to further cement in the differences in classes (and to make it harder to move between them. Upper classes know the lower ones language, but not the other way around. Kerik only knows some Kes because he was a high ranked Ret who worked with some before, normally a Ret Dorest would have no idea what that guy was saying and would need one of their superiors or their Arch to translate. The only reason why diamond-head entertained the idea of talking at Kerik was because he was able to reply to xeir questions , so they automatically assumed he was someone important in a unit.