Dev Blog #1: Crabs?
Hey there! If you’re here, it’s probably because you’ve been following the game on some of my other social media platforms (AKA: @futilrevenge on twitter or reddit.com/r/warisshell), but if not, let me give you a primer!
War is Shell is a hermit crab PVP/PVE game where you play as cute hermit crabs doing hermit crab things. Here’s a gif of an ordinary day in the life of a crab:
And, er there are aliens invading. I guess.
And your shells are guns. That’s normal hermit crab stuff, right?
So whats the deal with these crabs?
Development of this game started around a year and a half ago. Since then it’s been a long road, but I’m really excited about these dang ol’ crabs and I just want to get them out there!
Even though it’s been in the oven for that long It’s still super early in development! I have a day job, and while I just took a new position that should be lighter on the hours this game still has a long way to go. But in the interest of transparency, and to kick my ass into high gear, I’ll be working to get these devblogs out every other Tuesday.
Just tell me about the crabs
Sorry to tangent there, here’s the deal with this game:
War is Shell is a Crab on Crab battle and survival game, where sessions are short and sweet, filled with action and ending before they become a slog. It’s visuals are primarily inspired by PS1 era games with vertex jitter and chunky polygons, with some fancy shader tricks thrown in to spice things up.
You play as an adorable hermit crab on various procedural islands using your claws, guns, rockets, saw-blades, laser beams, occult books, and magic wands to chop and blast your way to the top. Each session is unique, with different threats and mutators being combined to ensure that you are always on your feet. A Deathmatch might be interrupted by the lord of the sea rising, aliens may invade, your dead opponents may rise from their graves.
Maybe you need to team up for a moment to stop this boss from winning the match (And taking the win from any player!), before fighting over the spoils.
Or, maybe, you’ll team up with your friends to survive an onslaught, collecting components for your rocket to blast you all to the next island, where you’ll fight off even harder and harder monsters. How long can you survive, and what powers will you gain?
The game is split into two distinct modes of play:
PVP - War is Shell’s PVP modes consist of a number of gameplay variants, many of which are staples from the genre, while introducing some new others
Team Deathmatch & Deathmatch
King of The Cache
Rising Tide
Shiniest Shell
Longevity of these modes and the online community in general is a big sticking point in my mind. To supplement them, the game is built from the ground up with bot support and custom servers in mind (With server side modding planned)
If you want to host a server between you and your friends with some dumb bots to act as cannon fodder, or, you want to supplement your larger server with nasty machines that will act as a challenge for even experienced players, you will be able to!
Not to mention - the mutators, environmental hazards, map types, and more. I’ll be making a PVP specific post in the future, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
PVE - Co-operative play is my favorite aspect of online gaming, and over my years I have found myself drawn to these sorts of games more and more. Taking heavy inspiration from games such as Left 4 Dead and Risk of Rain, I really want the PVE aspects to shine. I’m going to make PVE it’s own post as well, so have your shells at the ready for that!
More info to come! Follow me here, on Twitter @Futilrevenge, or check out the Reddit: /r/WarIsShell
Any questions? Comment on this post and I’ll try to hit as many as I can in the next post. See you in two weeks!
