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Elemental Flow – Getting Ready for Adventure X

Hello everyone! We’ve been pretty busy in the last month or so – Dialogue launched on Steam and Flo released two free games: The Felidae Phylogenetic Tree, an interactive exploration of feline species, and The Dream Self, an entry to the 2017 Interactive Fiction Competition.

Now that all those are out in the world, we’ve been focusing on Elemental Flow’s new demo, which we’ll be showing at Adventure X. We learned a lot from watching people play the previous demo, so we’re taking everything we learned there (and adding a few other ideas) to make this new version. We’ve outlined a few of the larger changes we’re making, but do note that these might not all make it to the final game – they’re steps towards a better version of Elemental Flow!

Story

Elemental Flow is set in a modern world, which enables us to more closely represent issues that matter to people today. This modern world, however, has a magical twist – the character you embody is an Elementalist, someone who can imbue her words with elemental properties (the details of which will be explored more in the game). This puts her in a unique position to converse with other people. Throughout the game you come across people with their own experiences and opinions, which oftentimes clash. By building connections and learning more about these people, you can help them understand each other.

While a demo is a bit short to see something very complex to its conclusion, we’re aiming to set up some of these conflicts and let you start addressing them, to give you an idea of what that the full game might involve.

 

The Elemental Plane

Your Elemental powers already give the game a magical slant, but we wanted to take it a bit further. At times, your character will find herself (voluntarily or not) in the Elemental Plane, a twisted reflection of reality. While only you can enter and leave the Elemental Plane, it is populated by echoes of regular people – spirits. Your character will be able to listen to and converse with these spirits, who hold single-minded and exaggerated versions of their real-life counterpart’s ideas. It will be a place to further explore the story conflicts in a setting where people’s rivalries and worries are amplified into warfare and despair.

 

General Balancing

There’s always something that needs tweaking, especially after seeing people play your game! We’re working on refining our tutorials and making various active elements feel just right. One of our main goals is changing encounters so they feel more cooperative – we want you to feel that both you and your partner are making efforts to fill the understanding bar, even if your elemental abilities make you more effective at it. A strong feeling of cooperation is what Elemental Flow is all about.

 

We’re still implementing features, drawing spirits and writing dialogue for the new demo. If you can, come try it out at Adventure X this November and see it for yourselves!

Florencia

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