Announcing: Age of Extraverts

2023-08-14 by lionbark (@iamlionbark)

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In a post-scarce, post-apocalyptic future, radioactive ash scours the land as humans are forced into bunker-like dwellings.

In the walled city of Skara-Hinton, humans have regained a semblance of comfortable living with the help of a friendly AI integrated into its governance.

Follow 17 year old Daphne's journey across the span of five years (and five parties) to find her place in a world where AI has rendered almost all human contribution insignificant, apart from the oblique job known as being a herald.

Age of Extraverts is an interactive fiction game - a coming of age story of a young girl getting to grips with society in a post-scarce city that's co-governed by a sphinxlike AI.

The gameplay/story will be mostly linear - broken up with Warioware-esque minigames - drawn from my own experiences and struggles with masking, burnout, fitting in and finding a place in the world.

The website will be updated fortnightly with devlogs on progress and craft discussion (gamedev, music, art, writing).

1 How's it going so far?

Really good, thanks! Taking stock at this point, we've got:

A screenplay that's been through several drafts (about 30k words), with the first act of five roughly nailed down and remaining four still in active development
Some early minigame prototypes
Some engine protoyping around the dialog and scenes work.

Some examples (art is placeholder and minigames aren't final)

Figure 1: Cutscenes and telling the actors where need to stand with cues (the crosses)

Figure 2: Storytelling minigame prototype (narrative crafting)

Figure 3: Sketch of the minigames taking place in the Skara-Daphne virtual world

(Stuff that's conspicuously lacking are currently art, music and sfx)

2 So when will it be released?

Having spoken to several solo/duo indie devs about how long their games have taken to release, the answer seems to be unequivocally, "we thought it would take 3 months but it's been two years. We're hoping to get it out by the end of this year, though."

In that spirit, I'm hoping to get it out by the end of 2023 (or at least a playable demo of the first act of 5 on Itch/Steam)!

3 Who are you again?

I'm lionbark, a software developer by trade and indie creative based in London. Having done a few small game jams before in the past, I'm now working full-time on this project. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the craft of gamedev, music and art and sharing what I learn on this journey!

Subscribe to updates on https://twitter.com/iamlionbark or https://mastodon.social/lionbark.

Reach out directly at eddie at lionbark dot com.

Splash art credit goes to Sunne.