01. Let's Get It Started

Bence Nagy
Oct 23, 2022
5 min read

Pursue

Description:

Pursue is a 3D Third-person, dark fantasy, open-world, action RPG game, where the nameless hero is on an adventure across the cursed land filled with fearsome enemies, dangerous dungeons, and various puzzles. Her objective is to find out what happened with the world and regain all her lost memories.

Story:

The story begins at the Forgotten Plane, where our hero came to her senses. While she is aware of herself, her memories are forgotten due to the environmental curse she was under, but eventually, the curse is weakening, and she gathers her strength and attempt to escape. Her journey is led across dark foggy landscapes, snowy mountains, infinite deserts from heaven to the depth of hell, dungeons filled with enemies and bosses, and structures filled with puzzles. Even if everything is against her, she is determined to gather every single missing piece of Information about her past. While she is alone in the world against numerous enemies, she can conjure constructs such as fist weapons, swords, hammers, and bows with her mind to defeat the foes, solve puzzles, and reach impossible paths.

Gameplay:

The open-world game is designed as nonlinear, open areas where the player can explore the world without restrictions and give options to the player to reach the objectives in multiple ways. It could also contain linear elements (dungeons, building interiors), where the player is more restricted movement-wise, but focused on the objective.

The player can move around the world freely by jumping, walking, jogging, or running if there is enough stamina available. There are additional structures that help the player to reach a different height level or area, but those are required to use the player conjuring (psychic ability) which is earned while progressing with the story, such as:

Grappling hook: The hero can conjure a rope and pull herself to a certain point, which is impossible to reach without this ability.
Jumping pad: A structure that gives a boost to the player and can jump longer or higher distances.
Teleport: There are checkpoints in the game which does not only save the current position but the player also able to teleport between them to save time. There are also no checkpoint teleport structures that can move the character to separate land from the main world.
Gates/doors: There are also unique gates and doors which are only open if the player has the right conjure ability to use it, these entrances are led to a separate closed area from the open world, with no other way to enter there (dungeons, buildings).

There are non-playable characters (NPCs) in the world, which are guiding the player towards either an easier or harder path to follow. Some encounters with them involve talking, where they might offer their help or ask help from the hero for a reward. These optional quests are not always straightforward, so it is up to the player's ability if they can complete them or not. Another type of encounter the player can have with NPCs is vendors where the player can sell or purchase a variety of items such as potions, gems, and herbs which boost the player's survivability.

There are also less-helpful NPCs, the enemies, which will attack the player when they are close enough. There are three types of enemies: normal, elite, and boss. The normal enemies have a small health pool and limited move set but are high in numbers. Above them are the elite ones, which have more health and wider move set and do more damage. And finally, the boss type, has a vast amount of health, various abilities, and attack patterns. These rare enemies require more precision and tactic to be eliminated than the others and usually guard a new area or checkpoint. The resources are limited, so the player needs to think ahead and be careful to save as much health as possible before encountering any bosses.

If the player dies, the defeated normal enemies will respawn, and the hero is set back to the previously activated checkpoint. The player must start that path over again until the next checkpoint has been reached.

To fight against those foes the player can use their attack abilities. There are normal attacks where the player deals a smaller amount of damage, but there is no restriction to use them and there are active skills which are deal more damage or support the player (additional damage or healing), but they are required to wait a certain amount of time before using it again.

Defeating enemies will reward the player with experience points (EXP). With enough EXP, the player can level up, earning skill points and unlocking active or passive abilities on a talent tree, which can be bought with the before-mentioned skill points. These abilities are either dealing damage or increasing the player's attack, defense, health, crit rate, and crit damage stats. With the skill points the player can also activate additional melee and ranged weapons to make the gameplay more versatile.

The player is additionally able to improve their abilities with gemstones. The character has a limited amount of gemstone slots which are unlocked as the player levels up. Every gemstone has a certain passive ability, which allows the player to customize their abilities to their own playstyle. Additionally, matching the same type of gemstones unlocks set bonuses that are on top of the normal passive ability, giving the player additional stats to upgrade the character further. To obtain these gemstones, the player must open chests, which are available after solving a puzzle.

Puzzles either open a new path or reward the player with a chest filled with loot (gems, health potions, quest items, collectibles, currency, skill points). Some of the puzzles are simple, like collecting orbs around an area to unlock the chest, finding the right combination of pressure plates, or dealing certain damage in a limited time. But there are more complex puzzles that the main story leads to, and those usually unlock a new area and required certain abilities to complete them.

Why open-world?

I have always been personally interested in open-world games, and even though it is a big undertaking, I wanted to challenge myself and create something on my own. The ability to roam freely throughout the world and visit any place that catches your eye gives a sense of freedom and calls for adventure. My goal is to capture that feeling.

Open-world scenery: Horizon Zero Dawn - Developer: Guerrilla Games

The Idea?

The concept for this game is to blend elements from two of my most recently played games, Genshin Impact and Dark Souls. My current plan is to create a game with the art style of Genshin Impact and the difficulty level of Dark Souls. The combat system will be a combination of Dark Souls' dodge mechanics and Genshin Impact's weapon and ability swapping. The game world will be filled with puzzles and chests that will challenge and reward players with experience, materials, and weapons.