Crooked Waters
A downloadable game
As of september 2017 we have been working on a new Virtual Reality project. A theme that in our opinion is yet missing, though rumors are that interest is abundant. In the thrilling world of piracy you join hands and hooks with your friends on a quest to sink every other ship you encounter.
“Crooked Waters is an online battle game where you join teams up to 4 players and engage in a battle with your crew.”
This is what our initial idea was for Crooked Waters and still is the goal what we are aiming for when we release it to Steam’s Early Access.
In the first place we want Crooked Waters to be a fun and thrilling VR experience where you can engage in combat with your friends. In the initial release of the Early Access you will be able to setup or join a lobby where a match with two teams of up to four people will be created. Both teams get a ship assigned when the match starts and will be placed accordingly.
With your team you have to manage your ship effectively by loading the cannons with gunpowder and cannonballs, adjusting the sail direction to catch optimal wind which results in a increased speed and create a strategy in which the climax will result in total annihilation of the enemy team.
At the moment we are preparing for Early Access on Steam. We want to precede this by releasing a free user test build that will be playable for a limited time. The exact releases of both phases is yet unknown but will definitely be this year, and probably sooner than later.
Development won’t stop after Early Access release as we have plenty of ideas for the future of Crooked Waters. Realization of these ideas is dependent of the success of Crooked Waters and the actual feedback we get from the community. As we know that success is all thanks to the community, community satisfaction is our first priority. This means that we want to consider and implement features requested by the community prior to our own wishes. But as of now, we do have some impressions of features and developments we would like to see in the future.
Features Features that enable the player to come up with more innovative strategies and more diverse gameplay. We are thinking about implementing multiple ammunition types like explosive cannonballs, chain/bar shots and more. Also multiple types of weaponry like pistols, muskets, a variety of melee weapons and also various ship weaponry like mortars.
Also we would like to improve the damage states of our ships and characters. We would like to see a more destructible ship with destructible masts, which in turn affect your maximum speed when destroyed. This matches great with the idea of using multiple ammo types which could be more effective in taking down masts while others do more damage to the hull of the ship.
Gameplay As for now, the main purpose of a match is to sink the other ship. While this may sound simple, there are some caveats which will improve the match’s diversity. When one of the teams might try to avoid combat when they are on the verge of losing the battle, the match will stalemate to a exhausting cat and mouse chase. To prevent this, we are implementing a mechanic which will speed up the time a match will take. The details will be given later as we are still experimenting and brainstorming for a correct solution. As for the future gameplay ideas, we are thinking about different match scenarios which could be realized by introducing different gameplay features.
Graphics Although we are content with the current graphics of Crooked Waters, we definitely want to improve the graphics and assets for a better virtual reality experience. This is something we are aware of and we want to change, but won’t have priority over feature and gameplay implementations.
The future ideas and visions stated above are not complete and are just a impression of what we want to achieve after we released to Early Access. This all can be summarized in the vision that we want to create an amazing battle game with some conventional gameplay elements which have proved to be essential for a battle game, but yet give the player an amazing and fun experience while floating on the water in the smell of sulfur and scurvy.
