The game that I’m creating is an exploration game set underwater, where an octopus works for a pizza shop in order to pay their mortgage.
The three characters that the player will see in the game are the octopus, the Home Loan Shark, and the owner of the pizza shop. The player takes the role of a broke octopus with a really cool hat, who needs to pay back the home loan shark before he evicts the octopus from their den. The octopus finds a job collecting ingredients and delivering food for a local undersea pizza joint. The pizza shop is owned by a shrimp who is very surly and rude. The Home Loan Shark is basically just a shark in a suit who has it out for the octopus.
The game takes place underwater in a bright coral reef. The weather will be sunny, making the ocean easily viewable and explorable, while making the bright colors of the coral pop. I want the game world to feel expansive and large, with lots of nooks and crannies to explore – dense enough to want to explore, but not too dense that it limits movement. Through exploration, the octopus will be able to find ingredients for the pizzas, which they can bring back to the pizza shop to make money. Additionally, if time allows, I’d love for there to be multiple hats that the octopus can find and equip. For the pizza shop, I want it to feel like an old 1960’s New York pizza shop – small and cute, with checkered floors, cheap tables and chairs, with just an oven and countertop behind the register. If time allows, I’d love to add more locations to explore, maybe creating a dense seaweed forest, a cave system, or an artificial reef made from a sunken ship.
The main items that the player will be interacting with are the pizza ingredients littered around the environment. They will have to search for the hidden items in denser or more remote regions of the ocean. I want to add a bunch of different ingredients, and reuse them somewhat infrequently, creating a sense of variety and uniqueness to the pizza toppings. Outside of that, I may implement a coin system where the octopus can collect coins to buy upgrades from a separate vendor, but I feel it may be out of scope for this project.
I want the style of the game to be low-poly, cute, silly, and bright. I think creating a low-poly experience will both cater to me as an inexperienced modeler, and help create more of a casual and cute vibe. I want the world to feel welcoming, fun, and rife with adventure. I really want the water to resemble other games like Subnautica and Abzu – bright and blue, the type you wanna dive in and drink. I would also like the game to feel safe for the player, not having them fearing the octopus getting eaten. I think by having few other animals in the ocean and making sure that the octopus is the biggest creature the player sees while exploring would create a more nurturing vibe.
The gameplay will be focused around exploration and movement. I want the player to be driven to collect all the toppings that they can, while also having the experience of moving around the environment be fun on its own. Within the pizza shop, I would like for the gameplay to feel like talking to merchants in games, with a still camera and menu options. I think a third-person perspective would be best for the game, letting the player see a larger portion of the environment and the items they can collect. I hope the experience will be a fun, medium-paced, relaxed experience for the player.
I love the lighting and colors in your references! I’m excited to see how you layer coral and other underwater assets. Do you think the octopus will have any special movement abilities- like squeezing through tight spaces or boosting itself with its tentacles?
Definitely a tentacle boost! That was one of my first thoughts for movement for sure. I really like your squeezing idea too and would love to add that if I have the time.
The idea of a little octopus in a hat is adorable to me, and I’m really excited to see how you’re going to go about designing it; I really hope you take inspiration from that little dumbo octopus– it’s so adorable. I am curious though, how do you plan to make the game really feel like it’s underwater? Visuals can do a lot, but I was wondering if you had anything in mind for the way the player moves, in particular.
I think for movement underwater, the most important thing is acceleration and deceleration. I think slowing both of them down adds a lot to making a world feel underwater. Additionally, I think having the octopus swimming with its head facing forward, then coming upright when it’s stopped will add a sense of gravity and buoyancy.
You’ve hooked me just with the opening sentence, I cannot wait to see each of these silly characters come to life. I also really love the abzu and subnautica references for that super lush undersea world, I think that’s gonna fit the game really well! I’m curious about the pizza shop section of the game, and what mechanics that will entail? I.e. animal crossing new leaf where you can work as a barista and slowly get to know character’s coffee orders, vs diner dash/papa’s pizzeria fast paced restaurant management?
I like the combination of underwater exploration and cooking sim, I don’t think I’ve heard of those two being put together before! How do you plan on taking advantage of the inhuman nature of the octopus? Having eight tentacles (and being underwater) mean that the player will move and interact with the world very differently than a human would, which will be hard to animate but potentially very interesting! I would imagine that the architecture and tools would be different from a normal human pizza shop as well?
I really like the fun cartoonish vibe that this gives off, especially the octopus wearing the hat. Since the game takes place underwater, are you going to try and account for water physics?
Your concept feels fun and quirky in the best way. How will you make sure that the levels don’t feel too empty if there are limited amounts of other animals in the ocean?
This is a really cool and well thought out concept! I like how much detail you included in your description of the world, it makes it feel alive already. Since you want the game to feel cozy is there actually a way to fail and get evicted or is that just to motivate the player?
The concept sounds cute and cozy, and the characters sound entertaining. I notice there’s a certain contrast between cuteness and the dark humor of being an on the verge of homeless broke octopus, is there anything else you’re planning to do to foster this contrast? The contrast reminds me a bit of Animal Crossing.