UNTIER // Rabbit food (Working title)
about
Untier (German for “beast”) is a survival horror/dark fantasy RPG that is currently in its planning and pre-production stage.
The game is set in a world with a huge class disparity in which humans slowly transform into the animals they are consuming.
After a rabbit plague decimated most available crops and vegetables, the upper class started eating humans and hoarding the remaining plant-based food sources, leaving the working class nothing but rabbits and scraps.
As a result, members of the upper class get to keep their human-like appearance while others slowly turn into animals.
protagonist
The player takes on the role of Marielle Charognard, a young girl with a working class background, whose best friend has disappeared without a trace several years ago.
To find her, she’ll have to infiltrate both high society and the underbelly of the city. However, once you arrive at the castle, you’ll find that not all is as it seems.
gameplay - overview
I currently envision the game as a classic top-down pixel-style RPG with different angles for combat and character illustrations for dialogues and menues.
The overarching narrative goal is to make it through a city, a garden and a castle dungeon to find a missing person.
To achieve this, you have to fight enemies/bosses, explore the environment to find or hunt food and weapons while making sure your character does not starve, as you have a hunger meter that constantly depletes.
gameplay - survival and metamorphosis
The game will feature a mechanic that revolves around eating different types of meat and acquiring skills that can help with combat against specific enemy types or moving through environments/gates.
However: The transformations bring positives as well as negatives.
Example – Eating fish
Transformation 1: Player gains gills and can now breathe underwater for short durations of time. No negatives.
Transformation 2: Player has gills and can stay under water indefinitely. Negative: Player’s health goes down while on land. This stops once the player is in water again.
Transformation 3: Same as 2 but as the player transforms further into a fish, they lose their tongue and the ability to talk to NPCs. Certain human NPCs might be hostile towards you in this state.
Transformation 4: Player can no longer walk to human NPCs and must stay submerged in water. A possible benefit could be talking to beasts/bosses instead of fighting them in this form.
These changes are only reversible by consuming human meat (hard to acquire, has story consequences) or with extremely rare items, so the player should strategically choose which type of food to consume while being under pressure not to starve.
(This is not balanced or tested yet and might need a lot of revisions but this is my starting point.)