Trip the Ark Fantastic | The Hermitage of Pride

[vota DC]

Shouldn't a hedgehog be entomologist rather than a botanist? After all his diet Is about insects.
They are non mammals like lizard, It Is great since you need to learn other languages and lizardmen language in ultima Underworld was great.

About the RPG aspect of this game. You have to explore and catch animals in the right moment of their schedule, otherwise this game is mostly like a graphic Adventure like monkey Island?

 

[Alex_Gamechuck]

yo fellow trip the ark dev here! the gameplay is a combination of PnCs like monkey island or RPGs (you walk around talk to people) but that's where similarities stop actually. The quests and sidequests are solved by combining clues and evidence into arguments (similar to tangle tower or sherlock holmes games). and then you present this evidence and your conclusions to the quest giver / the general public and move on. the clues are not items, most of the time they are pieces of information you receive as part of a dialog or from a book or as a result of a scientific experiment (combine a feather found at the crimescene with your microscope = figure out the kind of bird it belongs to is a magpie; combine this with the fact that someone saw mortimer the magpie in town that day = conclude mortimer was at the crimescene = publish it and get/lose reputation as a scholar).
the travel is more like in rpgs where you (after the tutorial cities) have a map and choose where to go etc, and the language learning is much more abstracted than in ultima, more like a minigame of learning rules and less like figuring out what each exact word means.
there are other diffences as well and it is reaaally hard to box the game into a genre since we're making stuff up as we go, but it is fair to say that if you like monkey island you might like this.


as for charles, he is a botanist because in the early drafts we were modelling him after darwin, but if we modelled him after attenborough he'd be an entymologist for sure

Sent from my SM-A505FN using Tapatalk

 

[vazha]

Getting some Redwall vibes out of this & lovin' it, keep up the good work!

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

Getting some Redwall vibes out of this & lovin' it, keep up the good work!

Hey guy, thank you, guy! Means a lot someone likes what we do! More stuff to come!

 

[vota DC]

Getting some Redwall vibes out of this & lovin' it, keep up the good work!

Then the fox Is a traitor.

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

Well hello there Codex! I'm sure you have missed me.

I know, I know. Oh stop it

ANYWAY, I'm here with more uber-cool content about our game, and this time we are talking about... (drumroll) CHARACTER CREATION!!!

Serena, our esteemed character designer will tell us how is she designing the characters for the game, and how fun it is to do! Serena, GO!

Character design: It all starts with the character personality

Hi everyone! My name is Serena Vanic, and I’m the character artist for Trip the Ark Fantastic. This is my process of making characters for the game. Hope you’ll like the article!

First I get a description of a character or a short dialogue from the writer to get the idea of the character’s personality, then do some research on how the given animal works (anatomy, fur colors, size, etc). Research takes a few hours and consists of searching for references from pictures and videos.

Next stage is basically brainstorming – sketching out some ideas which would best communicate the given character’s personality. These usually don’t make it to the final design but help me clear my mind of them.

I usually take parts of sketches and combine them into the final sketch design which is then sent for reviews and then fixed according to feedback.

Cleaning the sketch up

After the final design is agreed upon, I start to clean the sketch up, do lineart and choose colors while having the background (colors) in mind, where the character itself will be stated.

Read the rest of Serena's dev diary on our official website. It's pretty damn cool. I promise!

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

*Clears throat* HEAR YE, HEAR YE! FELLOW CITIZENS OF THE CODEX KINGDOM!!! IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

Three rules on surviving the coronavirus if you're a BUNNY

Dear rabbits, hares, bunnies and other denizens of the Burrows!

I’m sure you’ve been quite on edge regarding the news of the coronavirus outbreak in the Animal Kingdom! Well, fear not, for here are simple rules to avoid getting the virus yourselves, straight from your favourite doctor!

Dr. Bones Flappear, appointed to the Burrows mines by royal decree of King Lav 1878


Rule number one: Keep your paws clean!!!

Wash often, refrain from pawshakes, and please stop scratching your bottoms. It doesn’t spread the coronavirus but it’s unseemly and disgusting. And another thing regarding paws: I know we all prefer hopping around to walking, it’s faster and much less strenuous to the muscles… And I’d be the first to advocate hopping as opposed to walking were it not for one simple detail: HOPPING MAKES TWICE AS MANY PAWS DIRTY!

You don’t believe me? Here, check for yourself:

If you still don’t believe me, you can always refer to beaver Dabrovit’s treatise on animal movement with regards to legs used inspired by the gallop treatise of Hyeronimous the Horse.

As the Burrows has a dozen rabbits hopping from one place to another at any given time, imagine how fast until your paw steps into someone else’s paws? And those front paws are the ones you most often use to touch your face! Which leads me to…

Rule number two: Don’t touch your whiskers!

This mostly applies to you lady bunnies! The miners are clean-shaven but for some reason, it’s become fashionable for lady rabbits to grow whiskers of various styles. These whiskers are all fine and dandy but for the love of health, inspection STOP TOUCHING THEM! Every time you touch your whiskers with your paws, you transmit small particles to your mouth area, making it much more likely you’ll get the virus! And I know you all just can’t wait for a reason to visit handsome old me in the infirmary but there are other ways to get my attention. Ways that don’t include health hazards for the community! This particularly refers to you, Pauline, stop getting ill just to visit me!

These two were straightforward but here’s some more general advice:

Rule number three: Don’t associate with vermin!

It bears repeating that vermin are the number one spreaders of all diseases! Our own blacksmith Quince is as clean as can be expected from someone under my watch, but just to be on the safe side, I recommend keeping interactions with him to a minimum! At least until the outbreak is handled.

Vermin: NOT the cleanliest of the animal castes.
Those are the three tips for the prevention of coronavirus from your favourite doctor.

And if you’re thinking of just skipping to the end, let me just remind you of what Orville said:

You’re all gonna get something these days, it’s either going to be a coronavirus or a paycheck, so choose carefully!

Orville, badger foreman of the Burrows mine
So BE CAUTIOUS!

And follow our development on Discord, Facebook, Twitter or our newsletter.

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

Hi everyone!

In this lore post about our upcoming game, Trip the Ark Fantastic, I'm giving you more info about how we created our caste system. We even named it!

Estateology is a branch of “science” in the Animal Kingdom that tries to explain why certain Animals belong to certain castes.

It is a form of pseudo-science, even though it is not considered that by the Animals in the Kingdom. Wetake a cue from real-life existing pseudo-scientific ideas such as Biblical literalist chronology or the descriptive parts of eugenic theories, as well as phrenology, etc.

Our own caste system.​

As our game deals with science and its relation to mythology, this pseudo-science which tries to bridge the two is an important motif that the player will encounter and investigate several times through the course of the game, and will have to form an opinion towards it.

It was invented when the first new animals were found in the Southern Continent, and an approach on how to fit them into the castes was needed. As the Ark mythos states: “All Animals were of the Ark, and all are now of the Kingdom”. The statement was previously descriptive – it told of how the world is, and afterwards, when it was shown that there are Animals whodidn’t even know there was a Kingdom to be a part of, it had to be prescriptive.

We took inspiration from the French "estates", or classes.​

Rejecting the doctrine would have been fatal for the Kingdom, as it discouraged dissenters from leaving or forming new communities by framing the Kingdom as civilisation itself, or even civility itself. ‘Where would you even go?’ they ask, ‘There is nobody and nothing outside the Kingdom.’ The important aspect of the doctrine was that there was no alternative to the Kingdom, even in theory, there simply didn’t exist any successful societies outside of the Kingdom, only dens of bandits and lunatics doomed to failure within a generation.

To make sure that the idea of no alternative to the Kingdom alive and well, the Kingdom had to take a certain stance towards the natives: The Kingdom had to pretend that these natives never had a society, that theyare simply backward savages who never figured out a form of social organisation beyond small villages. The Kingdom cannot abide by the idea that they have another ‘country’ as an enemy. Or any outside enemies at all. There is no one outside, so who could be an ‘outside enemy’?

Specifically, this means that the Kingdom denies that there is a Monkey society, let alone a Monkey Country or Kingdom. There is a Monkey culture, that’s not problematic, after all, there is such a thing as a Squirrel Culture.

However, if these natives were once part of the Ark, which caste did they belong to? And in answering that, the scholars wish to answer – which caste should they belong to now? This is the field of “estateology”.

Within estateology, there are many possible approaches or schools of thought. However, all sides agree on the basic premise: the Castes reflect a certain inherrent moral aptitude, ie. the Cats are somehow better than the lower caste. Where this quality comes from is a matter of debate, and that’s how the schools are distinguished. The main two schools of thought are these:

1. Historical Realism – The historical realists believe belonging to a caste is question of historical merit: the animals belong to a caste based on the merit of their behavior on the Ark (and by extension, Civilisation). The placement in the castes is like a criminal sentence/meritocracy and reflects a presendent for the behaviour of a certain species.
2. Biological Descriptivism: Animals in each Caste have certain biological features in common, if you could only determine which features are salient for each Caste you could sort any conceivable animal into its appropriate caste. For instance: Commoners are small, Vermin have scales, Stewards are large and have imposing teeth or horns, etc.

 

[V_K]

the Castes reflect a certain inherrent moral aptitude, ie. the Cats are somehow better than the lower caste.

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

the Castes reflect a certain inherrent moral aptitude, ie. the Cats are somehow better than the lower caste.

I'm guessing we have a cat lover here?

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

Today in our lore blog for Trip the Ark Fantastic, we're talking about Charles the hedgehog. As our main protagonist, we decided it's important to flesh out his life and history as early as possible.

So here it is: the portrait of a scholar!

One of the youngest scholars to receive the illustrious "Master Scholar's Seal", a commoner whose inventions and writings are known all across the Kingdom.

The Quill-Quorni hypothesis revolutionised the field of botany. We don't go into much detail about it, though, as there are only a handful of people in the Kingdom who actually understand the hypothesis - and we're not one of them!

Even his forays into engineering were legendary - when he built the sprinkler system for his arboretum, little could he know that it was going to be repurposed into a shower system and used all across the Kingdom!

Charles' fame is also partly due to the romanticised aura the Kingdom has of the recluse scholar: he - unlike the politicised scholars near the capital - decided to move away from the spotlight and focus on his work more than on the dealings of the court. A scholar of such repute among all the castes of the Kingdom has rarely been born, apart from maybe the beaver Dabrovit, whose Scientific Method is in use in the Kingdom even today (and whom we also wrote about recently as well in another biography!)

So, without further ado - read about Charles Quill of Burrows, the Master Scholar, son of Herbert, an equally illustrious hedgehog we also mentioned before (a key scholar in the Lav rebellion and a member of the Lion King Lav's council)!

Tell us what you think, and would you enjoy playing such a main character? After all, reclusive scholars are not really the epic protagonist archetypes we usually find in RPGs!

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

Do animals eat each other in our game?

In the real world, carnivores and omnivores all eat other animals. It’s a bit of a “tough sell” when writing sentient animals. Not to imply that it can’t be pulled off – it’s been done a lot in fiction, but it’s just not what we wanted.

For example, Watership Down was filled with creepy scenes. However, in Watership Down it’s obvious that the cat and the rabbits are antagonistic, sworn enemies. This can easily be extrapolated to whole civilisations fighting against each other in a war for dominance, similar to the cat and mouse game Root.

However, our setting (and the atmosphere and story we wish to convey) require a tranquil kingdom (at least on the surface), one where the hierarchies are not accentuated by the beastly behaviour of certain castes, but by the seeming wisdom they exude.

Some food can be seen in the left side of the picture

So we decided that for many many years (as long as written history exists in our world, and beyond), the animals have all been herbivores.

Check out the rest of our lore dev blog on our official website

 

[V_K]

So this is going to be a piece of vegan propaganda? Now it all clicks.

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

So this is going to be a piece of vegan propaganda? Now it all clicks.

Lol, bingo

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

Annnd, another lore post

May 6 is a pretty special day for the whole world. The world's first postage stamp was produced. A rather significant thing for remote communication among humans.

Well, in the Kingdom, postage stamps are still not a thing. Letters are sealed, inked, and hand-stamped in the old fashioned way.

And don’t forget it’s not the internet era yet either (D’UH!), so unless you’re royalty with your own carrier service, you need to get your letter all the way to the nearest post office to have it delivered!

The entire game starts with a letter. As Charles receives one from the royal messenger, he is summoned to the capital.

This is how communication and remote communication (sending letters) work in our game.

 

[lightbane]

So we decided that for many many years (as long as written history exists in our world, and beyond), the animals have all been herbivores.

I'm sure carnivorous animals such as foxes and lions would totally get into that. I knew about the phrase "herbivore men", but this is a new level.

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

Work sets you free!

If you have been following my previous lore posts that deal with the past and the present of Trip the Ark Fantastic, I have something new, and this one is a wee bit - edgy.

​

Even though the game looks really beautiful on those screenshots and artwork, the past of the Animal Kingdom has been rather grim.

This lore blog deals with a dark and disturbing past of Prisons, Gulags, and Work Camps of the Animal Kingdom, where animals (in the most part) worked day and night, and died of hunger and agony.

Please let me know your thoughts!

 

[V_K]

I'm kinda bothered by the use of Gulag and work camp in the same list. Very technically gulag should be referring to a system of work camps, not a single institution. It is originally an acronym that stands for General Administration of Work Camps in Russian. But if you do use it to refer to a single institution, that would mean the same as work camp, so you end with a bit of pleonasm.

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

I'm back with a bit more lore for you guys. Also, actually a good point by V_K. Thanks for pointing that out.

In the game, there are basically three political factions, and the duke Nicolas represents the main opposition to the current system in the Animal Kingdom. Nicolas started the reformist movement

The duke started as a general in the Lav rebellion, but has since amassed a large following among the influential scholars and the gentry.

In a way, he forms the third of the three political powers in the Kingdom – the first being King Lav, the enlightened monarch whose lenient rule brought about piece and prosperity to the Kingdom, and the second being the revolutionary eagle Coriolanus, the revolutionary who currently resides in the heavily guarded colony prison facility.

Similar to King Lav, Nicolas is a strong believer in the hierarchy of animals and division of labour within the castes as defined not only by the Ark myth but also by (dubious) science. However, unlike the royalists, Nicolas believes that the lesser castes have the innate ability to perceive the true leadership of individuals.

Thus, leadership of the Kingdom should not be birth-given, but attained by the will of the animals by a democratic procedure. The leader should then be selected as a Chancellor, and his power stemming from not only his innate abilities to rule but also from the animals perceiving and acknowledging these abilities. This, Nicolas believes, will make rulers more accountable and less prone to tyranny, as has been known to happen.

The sketch of the entrance to the “Tiger villa” – a place of the fanciest of balls and tea-parties in the Kingdom. We’ve drawn Charles in for scale.

Nicolas has adopted several ideas from scholars and academics on how a transformation of the monarchy into a democracy should improve life for all animals, regardless of caste. These ideas are frowned upon in the royal circles, and as a duke himself, Nicolas has to be careful in his words and actions, since open rebellion against the King will only get him in one of the aforementioned work camps of the Kingdom.

His followers are often referred to as “reformists”. Some of them feel that the monarchy is an outdated notion, and some just want a system where they wield more local power.

The richer Commoners such as the scholars and merchants and especially the Steward caste, are attracted to Nicolas’ ideas of regional taxation – the abolition of the “King’s Tenth”, and similar centralised systems of rule – which they feel are a burden to their (and the Kingdom’s) prosperity.

Nicolas’ summer palace, where he invites the creme-de-la-creme of Kingdom society, and plots democracy.

The idea of “relaxing” the Monarchy and its hold onto the regions it commands appeals to many Nobles as well, who feel that the balance of power might be turned slightly in their own favour – as regional powers have long been controlled by the Crown without much say in their own regional matters.

When combined, this proves to be a worthy and powerful group of like-minded animals, and the King is rightly worried for the future of the Monarchy. However, it is King Lav’s belief that strengthening his grip would only remind the Kingdom of the era of Leopold. The King has therefore decided to tolerate the brewing dissent (from both the Nicolas-led reformists and the Coriolanus-led revolutionaries) and try to win the favor of the population in a different way.

This is where the game begins – with the Kings gambit that Charles, a famous hedgehog scholar, could find the ancient Ark and prove the myth to be true, and thus appeal to the sense of tradition and reason within each animal – once the products of science align themselves with the promises of intuition, all will again be right in the world.

 

[Scarlet Lilith]

This game seems super nice, can't wait to play it. A hedgehog saving the monarchy is just up my alley. Good luck with your development, Pero_Gamechuck!

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

This game seems super nice, can't wait to play it. A hedgehog saving the monarchy is just up my alley. Good luck with your development, Pero_Gamechuck!

Hey, thanks! Really appreciate your support!

 

[Scarlet Lilith]

This game seems super nice, can't wait to play it. A hedgehog saving the monarchy is just up my alley. Good luck with your development, Pero_Gamechuck!

Hey, thanks! Really appreciate your support!

Pft, I would give you support in the form of money but you don't seem to take it yet. I will buy it on release though, when it gets done™.

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

This game seems super nice, can't wait to play it. A hedgehog saving the monarchy is just up my alley. Good luck with your development, Pero_Gamechuck!

Hey, thanks! Really appreciate your support!

Pft, I would give you support in the form of money but you don't seem to take it yet. I will buy it on release though, when it gets done™.

Well, damn, that REALLY means a lot!

We are still looking for a publisher and possible opportunities before we decide to put the game on Steam and other platforms

 

[Pero_Gamechuck]

The three game factions explained: Your choices WILL matter so choose wisely

In the past few months we’ve endeavoured to explain the basics of the political and social intricacies of the Animal Kingdom in 1848.

You can read about the principal actors – Coriolanus representing the revolutionaries, King Lav representing the monarchy, and Duke Nicolas representing the reformists. But what are the real differences between all these eagles and tigers and lions, if any?

Well, our ambition was to write these factions as equally appealing and for the player to have real difficulty deciding which faction to side with, not going the easy route by giving each leader certain flaws so the choice is between varying shades of dark-grey (like in so many games today), but for them to be paragons of real underlying ideological issues they present. We wanted their worldviews to give you real pause about their world and by extension ours.

Charles receiving a letter from King Lav.

In essence, the main question that divides these factions is their view of the concentration of power – should concentrated power be checked (and if yes – who watches the watchers?), or on the flipside – should concentration of power be done away with completely?

To find relevancy, one might liken the royalists’ worldview to the modern managed democracy of many technocratic governments, the reformists to the worldview of representative democracies seen in the liberal west, and the revolutionaries worldview as the equivalent of direct-democracy.

They will all be presented to the best of our ability, and as this is a difficult task, we’ve decided not to dive into any of their arguments today (however we have been known to discuss this on our Discord). We will leave the bulk of this for the players and the game, but today we will just “lay out the battlefield”, and let your imagination take over, after reading the three “manifests” of these factions.

ROYALISTS: MONARCHY – The current world

First, there is the monarchy – the rule of Lions, and the land-owning right of the stewards and nobles of the Kingdom. The world is an unbroken constant – unfaltering like the line of kings from the time of the Ark to modernity.

The debate over nature versus nurture finds no quarter with these sovereigns – they are both born and bred for leadership. A kingdom that would tie the hands of these titans away from the absolute rule would be a kingdom that is more foolish than cautious. The petty motivations of lesser castes – wealth or food or pride – these are all given to lions at birth, and their only focus – the big picture and the wheels of history – that is what every lion thinks of.

And that is why the monarchy has prospered so well in the millennia of earth. A different system has never existed nor has it ever been tried. This is how loyalists view the monarchy and its feudal rules – dictated by tradition, and just and true by its very definition.



REFORMISTS: DEMOCRACY – The emerging world

Opposing the loyalist view, one can hear the whisper of reform creaking through the halls and balls of high society. The world is not constant, nor is it the recurring pattern of the ebb and flow following the great flood.

Where once were fields, now stand the mines of industry, and where once was an infinite and impenetrable sea, now is a route of trade and possibility. It stands to reason that the roles within such a society must change as well, with the changing times, and with the changing names. The responsibility of rule is not something one should be born with, it is a reward to be earned – and re-earned: the steward who ruins the mill he runs should not be left in charge of it, nor should a ruler disliked by his subjects be left on the throne unchecked.

The captain of industry who captains no more should be allowed to fall, so that a better may take his place, and the same goes for Kings as well – for the good of the realm. These are the whispers of democracy and these whispers, coming from the Tiger Duke and his allies, are slowly getting louder, and more appealing.

REVOLUTIONARIES: ANARCHY – The unknown world

But across the sea, in the colony prison, the rocks are beaten into pebbles, and pebbles into the sand, and sand is thrown back into the sea. The meaninglessness of society starts to sink in after a few decades of such work, as these people have seen the backside of wealth and power, and know it exists.

For whoever wields some power or wealth, and tastes the sweet fruits of their use over others, only desires more power and a larger divide, so wherever there is affluence, there must also be poverty, and wherever there is the powerful, there must also be the rejected. A just society cannot abide by such contradictions, and therefore – they must be done away with.

The only truly just world would be a world – without power. A world where the structures of power – the thrones and bureaus and offices and prisons – are done away with, completely. In this reasoning, the prisoners, dissidents, rejects, and criminals have found a common cause with the beggars, the farmers, the miners, and slaves. These are the ramblings of anarchy, as it slowly stirs and wakes all over the Kingdom.


Which one would you choose, and why?

 

[vazha]

From what I ve seen so far, this looks far more like an adventure game with well-written setting & lore, than an actual rpg with its kill stuff, level up mantra. Any insights on tactics, combat & how much of it will be in the game?