Twosoulled Devlog #1: A Humble Beginning

Hello everyone!! 

This is Cary, project lead of The Prismatic Forge. (We make colorful experiences!) I'd like to talk about a project that I've been developing for about a year now called Twosoulled. I'll be posting regular dev logs over the coming weeks, so you can watch the evolution of the project yourself.

Twosoulled is an asymmetrical co-op  fantasy roguelike where one person plays as an adventurer and the other plays as their Ego, a living weapon. Where the "Wielder", so called, will be picking from a series of fantasy races and classes for character creation, the Ego picks their base material and type, from swords to staves to bows. Though contributing to the same goals, players 1 and 2 play very different games with some key symmetries. Twosoulled takes place in a highly magical fantastical world, where every new level is a story in itself and a concept that's just fun to explore.

I started working on Twosoulled by myself - firstly because I was fascinated with the core concept and just really wanted to see it be made. Secondly, I had just spent months of work making a sizable mod for Valheim and over the course of it, I really got a good taste of the workflow of a real Unity game. I felt like I was perfectly poised to work on my own project, and then the concept just popped into my lap during a rather entertaining conversation with some friends.

Quickly, the idea went from "Someone needs to make that" to "I could make that." And so development began in full-force.

I picked up Unity, which I've worked on for a number of major projects at this point, and this time I decided to start with the tough stuff and get it out of the way first. The things that always spring up and become major obstacles down the line. I built a 2D skeleton rig system and worked out animating a moving character. I spent an inordinate amount of time building a system to generate outlines, giving the game a very specific look which I'm quite happy about - something I could talk about for hours! Saving and loading data with my own byte encryption in actual save files. The full Character Creation process. You name it.

As I worked on all this, I also sat down for hours on end and just designed. I came up with systems and skills and dozens upon dozens of pages of lore. Design's been my bread and butter since I was a child, when I would take decks of cards and assign each unique one classes and abilities and force my poor brother to play through my poorly thought-through RPGs. As the details just kept coming so easily, I could tell I was working on a gem in the rough. There was a really compelling potential here.

A potential I could definitely not finish on my own. Not even with my highly updated and very good new art.

It is me. A Regular Human Man.

Talk to you soon!