Eidolon -- why not take a long walk in post-post-apocalyptic Washington?

[brkl]

So this is a game. It's about walking around in Washington after human culture has been dead and gone for a while already. It has some survival mechanics, but it's not about that. As a survival game it's the most forgiving I've come across. What it's really about is environmental storytelling, mood and pretty pictures. Mostly you walk around and pick up stuff to read and pictures to look at from the years between now and 2400 or so. The distances are pretty enormous, so play is mostly about traversal. If you pick this up, know that the eagle takes you to interesting places and don't annoy the bears. It's $15 on Humble, you get a Steam key as well.
 

[Korax]

I just bought this, but I haven't taken the time to really play it yet. Maybe I just haven't been paying enough attention, but I barely remember seeing anything about this game. I thought it was still in beta/early access or something. It apparently hasn't been selling all that well, and I feel kind of bad for the dev team.

[juv3nal]

I barely remember seeing anything about this game. I thought it was still in beta/early access or something. It apparently hasn't been selling all that well, and I feel kind of bad for the dev team.

 

It's had some fairly favorable coverage on giantbomb and rps:

 

if it's not doing well, maybe that's a sign of some degree of oversaturation in the survival genre?

[brkl]

This is definitely not primarily a survival game. This is closer to Gone Home. Maybe that should be more apparent.
 
Anyway, the creator is apparently satisfied with the meagre sales. They never set out to make a game that even could turn out to be a big hit. I think it's a beauty.
 

 

[JonCole]

Junior Mints also did a video for Eidolon on Polygon - http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/22/6056991/eidolon-gameplay-pc#ooid=YyeDdzbzocsBb0HVNm4Y_c1AldFTcd-B

 

The studio head of Ice Water Games did a blog post on Gamasutra detailing the financial background of the game's development - http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KevinMaxon/20140818/223653/Finances_of_a_Bare_Bones_Developer.php

 

If you're going to buy it, seems you should do it through their Humble Store page as they get a better cut and they request you do so on their Steam store page - http://www.icewatergames.com/purchase

[Korax]

Weird. I remember seeing all that coverage, but I guess a lack of a definitive "This game is out now!" announcement resulted in my mind papering over it. It's good to know that the creator had set expectations low enough that the lack of sales is still okay.

[shammack]

I'm not really that interested in playing the game, but I did buy the soundtrack immediately after watching the Quick Look.

[Thrik]

The soundtrack is definitely nice.

 

I have to say though, the art style doesn't do anything for me. I guess they were going for something similar to the highly stylised abstraction of Journey, but it just goes a bit too far in my opinion. I'd much sooner that the buildings weren't all scaffolding and the lighting weren't so muted and flat. I suppose that if we were to think of it in terms of paintings, every screenshot from Journey is something I'd hang on my wall whereas I couldn't really say the same about Eidolon. This is exactly the kind of game where the aesthetics are a vital component of the experience, so if you flat-out don't like them then it's hard to really get into it.

[brkl]

Huh, yeah, that's probably the case. Journey never appealed to me.

[Murdoc]

Yeah I saw the quicklook of this and it felt a little too inspired by Proteus but with similiar mechanics from the rest of the genre it's going for.

 

It all seems alright, but not my jam.

 

I did buy the soundtrack though because it's pretty nice.

 

http://icewatergames.bandcamp.com/releases
 

[JonCole]

I decided to just go ahead and buy this. I really liked that article the creator put up on Gamasutra, felt like they could use another sale.

 

I've played about an hour so far and I'm liking it. The art style is nice and can create some real beautiful landscapes, but the level of fidelity also means that during certain times of day or during certain weather events like fog or rain it's really hard to see. Luckily the survival elements thus far have been really mild, so sleeping to progress the game clock and then quickly foraging for food to kill the very hungry status from sleeping is no big deal at all.

 

I've got a couple of story pickups so far and there aren't very many things to glean from them.  It's kind of like if someone in the real world wrote a journal entry and then gave it to a stranger with no context. I'm curious to see if this stuff will actually end up generating some kind of tangible narrative or if it's just going to be a broad experience with little tastes of story littered throughout.

[Korax]

I really like the way that the journal entries are implemented. Any note you find gives you clickable buttons for any important names involved, and clicking them generates a little green beacon that leads to the next nearest note related to that name. It gives you a way to intentionally follow a particular thread while still remaining completely optional, but if you want to wander around and find things yourself, there's nothing keeping you from doing so. Right now I'm following the journal entries of Ada, which are interesting in their own right, but because I found one of the last entries, the "next nearest" property of the beacon has me following the journey in reverse order, and I find that neat.

 

Also, screenshots (hidden to avoid taking up a bunch of space):

[brkl]

I'm bumping this thread because of the mention in the podcast. Danielle likes this game; you should try this game.

[chummer]

So I picked this up in the Devs for Ferguson bundle and finally started playing it today. It feels like such a gigantic game, which I know is in part due to the slow pace of the walking, though I'm curious to find out how big the map is when I "finish" the game.
 
I found a map early on and assumed that I was somewhere on it and decided to go northward after finding a compass quickly after. I ended up hitting what seems like a mountain range meant to block my passage, and since I couldn't find myself in the map, I just started wandering around. I eventually spotted the transmission towers that were on the map, and I realized that the map wasn't really drawn to scale. It made sense once I saw it as a sketch made by a human as opposed to a developer's hand giving me a tool. It was around then that I also discovered that

clicking on the tags in your notebook shot up an orb of light that led you to another related artifact.

 

I'm a couple hours in and I don't feel my time has been wasted, but I'm mitigating that by listening to podcasts while wandering. Not sure if that'll hold up, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

 

Oh, I also really like that even if all the world's details haven't loaded, if you look into the far distance you can still spot the glowing globes.

 

 

If you pick this up, know that the eagle takes you to interesting places and don't annoy the bears.

 

Hot tips. I'll keep that in mind.

 

A question: how quickly did you guys find the bow and the fishing rod? I find the rod almost right off the bat, and I only got the bow by pure luck. Does the game start in the same place every time?

[Reyturner]

This is currently in the Weekly Bundle on Humble Bundle btw