Witches of Wicklow Vale

When starting the project I had leaned towards a shop sim style, having NPC’s come to the player and the player come to NPC’s depending on the type of request. This was a piece of the game that was going to absorb a lot of time while not being central to what the game was supposed to be. As a resolution to this, and as an effort to reduce the scope to align with my preferred timeline, I replaced the NPC’s and town with the raven system. Instead of the player needing to interact with NPC’s and a town directly, the player receives requests from their familiar that also delivers the product of the request. This cut a massive amount of time, while keeping the core of the game that was supposed to have the most attention unchanged.

Having the player be able to transform was integral to the vision of the game. But I didn’t want to lock flight until halfway through the game, or have the cat be a useless fluff transformation. So I solved 4 problems with 2 stones. The crow would be accessible to the player almost immediately, however your flight was restricted to areas that had offering stones activated. These offering stones were already in the design plan, and it was a diegetic solution to progression gating. The cat form became highly relevant when I made the grass much more dense, it became difficult to locate herbs in the brush so I plan to have the cat aid in locating herbs through smell. As well as the cat being a bit faster with exploration on the ground before unlocking the crow in that area.