The Creature of Castorfield - First Look

Since we took a vote, and our patrons decided that they would be okay with one of our projects having monthly updates that weren't playable, I've been working on the Creature of Castorfield in the background. Normally our pipeline is something like, send brief to artist, artists completes artwork, writing is completed and put into the game a very brick-by-brick method. TCOC is different because it's mostly graphic design work so far, and each piece opens up a lot of work that can be completed on the game, and so let me walk you through the three images we have above.

The Office

You are a sheriff that has been assigned to the small rural mining town of Castorfield, because the previous sheriff has been reported missing and the town's population is slowly dwindling. You arrive to find the office somewhat unkept, but filled with a lot of things that will help you try and learn about the history of the town, including two large filing cabinets filled with files of arrest reports, Incidents, Deaths and so on. A big chunk of the games story is delivered through the main character reading the notes of the people that came before, there is also a library and a doctors office with similar notes to read.
There will also be mail, you will receive mail on some days, and you can write to nearby university professors for advice on certain things, medical phenomena or animals tracks.
You can see in the top right hand corner two things: THE BEANS and the calendar. At the moment it is intended that you will have 40 days to figure out the mystery before which an ending is triggered, which ending depends on which actions you've taken so far. The beans is how much energy you have to perform actions on a given day, how many documents you can read, how far you can travel and so on.

The Folders

Each folder and corresponding document is date marked, and once you've read a document a paperclip will appear on it, so that you don't lose track of your progress. There's three major and real historical events that happening in the region of Massachusetts where this is set, the 1888 blizzard, the world war (1914) and the 1929 stock market crash, and our protagonist arrives at Castorfield in 1932, where the consequences of these three events have drained the town of labourers and money so that Everett Co, the owners of the mines and the town have slowly slipped from control and the Creature has slowly risen in power. Which means that there will be documents of a time period of 1888 to 1932 and there is a lot of history and events to cover in that time, and a lot of characters actions that will unravel the story and the mystery as you read through. You can see a scroll bar on the right, because you can scroll through the list of folders to find which one is next, and at this exact minute, scrolling the folders, opening the filing cabinet, and taking out documents all has sound effects. This game is likely to have a much stronger attention to audio because of its non-linear, but repeated actions.

The Document

Each document will include its date and author, there are two sheriffs before you covering the 44 year history of the game Frank Smith and Mark McDuraith, and three doctors similarly. They each cover a specific time span, and encounter different parts of the mystery separately, that you might be able to put together upon reading it all. I currently have an Excel document that features 61 different people that tracks the bloodlines of all the important families across that 44 year gap (keep in mind that in 1888 it was pretty common to have 2-3 kids in your twenties) so there will be roughly three generations per family, with some families being very important to the story. This Document in particular covers the aftermath of the blizzard of 1888 in which the first sheriff Frank Smith, checks on all the residents of the town to see the damages, who didn't survive, who has gone missing, and can the miners return to work yet, or is the cave snowed in.

Other plans so far

At the moment the idea is to have the main character racing against the clock of their own feminization, and influence from the creature. While the game runs for 40 days before an ending that means that we're getting FOURTY UNIQUE illustrations of the progress. Each in-game day will show the small changes happening to the protagonist, to see the full transformation slowly happening from lumberjack to bimbo jane. We've also found a voice actor that can do both male and female VA, and will be attempting a similar kind of scale with the main characters voice acting.

I hope this gets you excited about what we could accomplish when not making games brick-by-brick, and even though it won't have any characters interacting just yet, the idea is to build a solid game play foundation, of a slow tense build up, and then have a lot of impactful scenes at the end.

Hit like on the post if you read the whole thing, I also worry people don't even read my big long rants, and leave a comment if you're excited about what's coming soon! (I know this isn't a youtube video, so it's not for the algorithm I just genuinely want to hear from you)