[Prototype] Rat King

edited in Projects
Heya! Here's an old project idea I've been working on, Rat King. The idea is to have a ball of rats that have their tails knotted together. Its kinda terrible right now, but I'm hoping to soon have the rats interactions a bit clearer and doing some more interesting things. The feeling I am trying to get out of this is, i guess the same feeling of a kid burning ants with a magnifying glass. It's probably in the rat king's best interest for you to just put it out of its misery, but with it being interesting, and hopefully it having some interesting interactions within itself, you play with it. Or something.
At the moment they are just roaming around until they come within a distance of the rat king, then they become part of the rat king. they get hungry, and then eventually starve to death. They can also go on heat and breed, have babies, and then eat the babies to keep the rat king alive. I need to make them poop and eat the poop, and also blink. It isn't much right now but thought I would just show what I'm working on.

Later!
(Starving to death)

(Breeding and Ragdoll failure)


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Comments

  • I find this very disturbing... :/
  • edited
    The skinned meshes with ragdolls are brilliant (especially when they glitch a bit and stretch).

    The ragdoll version is still pretty dark, but it feels closer to Gangbeasts (with the big white eyes). I can't really say if people would prefer this version, I really like the grotesque art with the foreskin rat heads, but the grotesque art makes it feels like more of an art game (whereas looking like Gangbeasts looks a lot more like games that Youtubers are already playing).

    In any case I'd expect it's a bit easier to develop the concept at the lower fidelity?

    Obviously there's a lot still to be done. Personally I really want to see the babies wriggling, and even growing into adults (I assume this is meant to happen?), and so for the baby eating to be more tragic.
  • Ragdoll version feels a heck of a lot better. If eventually you could take the modeled version and apply it as a texture to the ragdolls, cool, but if not then ragdolls win. The movement and feeling of liveliness wins out.

    It's really dark but I can see people liking it through morbid fascination. The question is if you want to keep down that path and what kind of relationship you want to cast between the player and the rats, which may determine environments, objectives and mechanics and such.

    I like the way you're interacting with them now, throwing food and directing the action from an almost embodied perspective, like a crazy scientist. Testing. It's like Gladdos and humanity. Maybe that's an angle to go with :)
    Thanked by 1EvanGreenwood
  • Great to see what you've been up to @bevis!
    Thanked by 1Squidcor
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