Have you ever wondered what life would be like if technology hadn’t evolved rapidly and we were more connected with nature? What if we could speak with different parts of nature and share their energy? In different Native American cultures and other cultures around the world believe there is a way to commune with nature and learn from it.

In Little Buffalo Studios’ upcoming survival crafting game, Akiiwan, players must learn how to survive off the land; if they fail, they will die but respawn with new knowledge gained. A helpful fire will illuminate your path and share wisdom with you on your previous ones and how you potentially could have managed them better. 

After checking out Akiiwan, we had the opportunity to speak with the founder of Little Buffalo Studios, Jeremy Nelson, and talk with him about his upcoming game, Akiiwan. Here is what he has to say about the game:

Matt: Hi, thank you for having me. Can you please introduce yourself to our audience and give us some insight into how your game was created?

Jeremy: Hi, my name is Jeremy Nelson. I am the founder of Little Buffalo Studios, and we are announcing Akiiwan Survival, which is a chill survival crafting game with a talking campfire. It was kind of started by a what-if, which is basically since the dawn of time, we’ve all sat around the fire. What if the fire was listening? So the fire is a magical, kind of grandfathery, grandmotherly type character that both wants you to succeed, but also wants you to learn some lessons the hard way. It’s there to help when you need it, but it also wants you to explore and grow.

I think the game was really actually, in a lot of ways, inspired by playing games like Dredge and Dave the Diver, and thinking about how to bring that kind of vibe into survival crafting, which is often, you’re gonna die every 20 seconds. There’s a lot of grindy, grindy stuff. But how can you tell a story, have it a story-rich game that still has a challenge, but isn’t forcing you to overclock your brain? And I think maybe as I’m getting a bit older as a gamer, I’m drawn more and more to those, and I’ve always loved survival crafting. But I find I don’t wanna be at 110% to play, and I also wanna go deeper into the survival crafting, which I think is the other really defining thing about this game. We’ve gone, really, really deep into crafts, but in a really fun way.

Not like each plant only gives you one thing.  The plants give you different things in different seasons.  And there’s a real, I wouldn’t recommend it, but I really feel like after playing this game, you could actually survive a lot better than without it, actually being like a sim. It’s not that. But it’s just the way the story unfolds, with each craft allowing for that. And you even get to see how they’re actually made. We have this fun, fun system where every time you unlock a craft for the first time, the stars in the night sky under your campfire animate, and they come together and show you how it’s actually made. 

Yeah, that’s a quick rundown of what we’re doing. We’re basically announcing. So we just announced the game and we are going into at least six months of open
development. So, anyone via our Steam page can get access to a build of about four hours. It’s not a demo,  so you have to request access, but you can play it, give your feedback, and help kinda grow the game. similar to what Subnautica did. We really, really wanna grow with our players, and basically make a game that they love, because if they love it, we love it. 

Matt: Now, earlier, you were saying how the campfire provides wisdom to the players, but it doesn’t always wanna give it to you directly versus you finding out.  Before that, there are questions that you have, but is there any way the players can actually ask questions in their own manner? And then if they have questions in their own manner, do you have a procedurally generated system that looks for certain words to be able to answer the questions? Or, I know some companies have been using AI for the benefit of  “Oh, if it says this, do this,” sort of under the procedural system. But I also know that’s a little taboo, but how does your game, Akiiwan Survival, handle that?

Jeremy: Yeah, so what we’re doing really is allowing players to choose different paths through the game. So, I think whenever you’re surviving, you could be more interested in hunting, more interested in crafting, more interested in fishing, more interested in building, more interested in farming. There are a bunch of different ways to succeed in that sort of environment, and the sort of Q&A back and forth with the fire is really structured around that, so players can kinda choose their own kind of path. And so that’s a level of agency. It’s not on the rails. And in the game, you’re arriving in fall, and you soon discover that winter is going to be upon you soon. And, then by that time, if you make it through to spring, the world for which reasons or for which are explained during the story begins to start to flood and threatens to take you and your fire along with it. And then you’re, so then you’re on to actually building a canoe, gathering enough stores for your journey, and carrying and saving the fire that you’ve become quite attached to at that point as well. And so that provides a level of challenge.

So there will be a story mode that’s a lot less punishing, not punishing at all, I should say, but there also could be for players who really want
that challenge.  You kind of have to plan and figure out with each moon what you’re learning, because every moon, what you can harvest, what the animals do, it changes. So, probably if you’re playing on a bit more of a challenging mode, you’re not gonna get it right the first time. You may think you’re doing well, but the days are gonna get shorter and shorter and shorter. It’s gonna get colder and colder, and you’re gonna find that your stores maybe weren’t really planned out, and the things you prioritized on that first run might not have been the right ones. Yeah.

Matt: In regard to what you just said, you implied that there are multiple, challenging modes or difficulties.  Do you have just a template of easy to hard/extreme? Or, how do you go about handling the difficulties? Or is it more of a skill that players can adjust for certain aspects?

Jeremy:  Yeah, I mean, in terms of the difficulties, the game is sort of based around your stamina, your ability to stay warm, and your food, which are sort of the core things to balance. We haven’t included water because I think water’s a little bit grindy at this point. Drinking water isn’t fun, and it’s something you can do. Although some of us, I mean, I’ve forgotten at this conference and lost my voice. But nevertheless, we’re trying to bring that down to its essential core. In terms of the actual balance, though, of difficulty, at its core, really, there will be a story mode, a challenging moderate mode, and then a bit more punishing difficult one. We have also built up the entire game in a very data-oriented way that will support a lot of challenges. And that’s one of the fun things that we’ll be adding, so that it can really be an infinite game.

So when you make it through and you make it through the story arc, and you also have a sense of what is possible and what you need and what you don’t, we have the ability then to create different challenges. For instance, you’re gonna start the game one moon right before winter, and you can only bring five tools with you. And, make the right choices with that. Or in the dead of winter, and make the choices there, or in different sorts of environments where certain things that may have been really important ’cause they live in one environment, are not present to you.

So we really wanna have that chance for the player to both play a really great story, because I think, games like Subnautica really did that, just great. I love it when survival crafting isn’t just survival crafting, but is really telling a great story along the way. But it’s also fun then once you’ve learned the possibilities of the world to play with them and try to figure out how good I can be at this, as well. 

Matt: Now, with survival crafting being a genre that I would say players like to play with each other, more so, are there any thoughts on a multiplayer aspect? ‘Cause right now we’re watching the single player, behind your shoulder, and how would you go about tackling that? Would you apply the difficulty aspect? Or if you did apply a difficulty aspect, would it be that each player comes in with their own, or just a generic world difficulty?

Jeremy: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think, what we would be looking at first, and what’s emerged, actually, at this event, is that we found a ton of couples are playing this together, or friends. And so it’s really identified to us the priority of two-person co-op, and so that’s on our roadmap now. And in terms of how that’s balanced, I think to a certain degree, as I was sort of chatting about, the different strengths that players, and the interests that players have, in a real-life, sort of,
community-based, survival, environment, and so on, drawing upon some of the other inspirations of this, because our team is largely indigenous. And so we have ancestors who literally survived off the land, and people had different roles in communities and would do different things, and those were driven in a significant part by their interest and their abilities. Right? 

So I think, in a certain way, it’s almost like you let the players decide what they… And that’s really fun. It’s almost like  “Oh, I got a deer today. Oh, I found all these berries. Oh, now let’s make a stew with it.” Right? And it’s like… So that will be really fun. I think one of the things we’ve kind of built out a bit more, we haven’t added to it, but we’re… is some of the cooking aspects of it with the recipe aspects. So, literally, two of you could go away, do different things, come together, and figure out what you’re making for dinner, but in a survival grafting sort of way. 

We’re really leaning into some of the surprising things that I’ve never seen in a survival crafting game, actually, all the foods you can make from the land. And one of the things a lot of games do, I think, I’ve never seen a simple plant, say, a cattail honored in the way it actually would allow you to live.  From baking the roots into a soup, a thickener that adds nutrients, to stopping bug bites, to making a shelter that’s waterproof and windproof, and actually swells up with rain, to protect you, then dries out so it’s not heavy and you can carry it around.

So everything would have this aspect to explore, and I think that’ll also be a really fun part about co-op, is hey, I like, especially as a new moon turns over, people
going out and saying, “Oh, what’s possible now in this new moon that wasn’t before? Let’s go back and check out all the plants and see what’s there and what’s not, and then what can we do and what can we combine to make?” So, yeah.

Matt: Yeah, see how the habitats have changed. And even the roaming patterns of animals change during the seasons, so that’s a big aspect.

Jeremy: Absolutely. Yeah, we really invested a lot in animal AI, and so all of our animals, in the game, are aware of your presence, your sight, your sound, your movement, your scent, and that gives us a lot of possibilities for a whole number of different quests around them.

Matt: Now, with you saying investing a lot of time in, did you go out to the wilderness and just watch animals, or watch documentaries? Or how did you do that specifically?

Jeremy:  Yeah, I mean, a lot of us on our team grew up in those environments. Some people on our team do hunt, and a lot of us fish. We’ve spent a lot of time doing that; that was certainly a huge part of my life, especially growing up. So I think there’s an understanding of that, and then it’s talking to other people in the
community and getting that story, about the details. But I think part of it is, I don’t know. It’s based on personal experience. And then, having the conversations or doing the research to try to make it honest.

Yeah. So, as an example of that, I guess,  I don’t like hunting… Or let me rephrase that. I don’t like how hunting is done in a lot of games, because it’s ridiculously easy.  You literally are picking up rocks and taking down deer.

That’s never gonna happen. So in this one, when you’re first learning to hunt, the fire basically says, “Well, a hunter respects the animal that they’re going to take. If you can get close to a deer without scaring it away, I’ll know you’re ready to learn.” And so… that’s one of the things I think that’s unique about the fire, as this grandfather system, is that it cares for you but it’s taking you on a quest that actually, would prepare you to survive and be independent, as opposed to a fantasy of you touch a tree, it magically turns into a bow in your hands and you’re taking down a moose, two seconds later, which is not the case. And so, yeah, with all that, it’s interesting. That could sound like it’s really, artificially grindy, but it’s not. That’s actually how you would learn.

And in gameplay, it actually works, because you’re making progress, but it’s honest progress. You know? And, you’re actually learning how to make a bow. And your first bow isn’t gonna be perfect, and you’re probably only gonna be able to hunt, grouse, and pheasant with it, but that’s what you would do. You wouldn’t make a composite longbow out of nothing.

Yeah. It’s just not how it works. And so, everything in the game really has that level of honesty to it. which I, people have found really, really, really appealing. One of the first people from Pax to join our Discord was actually a wilderness survival instructor. And, she said,  “This is great. I love this game [laughs] and I can’t wait to play more.” This actually spoke to her. Right? And I feel like that’s just wonderful for us, that that’s the feedback we’re getting, because that’s what we want.  we… And I think that’s what makes it surprising. You can play any… 

We feel this is a game, especially because we made the gameplay sessions kind of short and stackable, so that you can play adjacent to other survival games too, and it gives you
Something completely different. So, it’s not like… We’re not here trying to say we’re competing with Long Dark 2 or something, but you can literally play this alongside Long Dark 2 and you’d enjoy both in different ways. which I think is something,  really unique about what we’re doing.

Matt: Now, when looking at the video gameplay, it’s first-person. I would assume you chose first person to give a more humanistic feeling, look through your eyes, but was there ever talk of doing a third person too, kind of be able to immerse you in the wilderness more, and new settings, or?

Jeremy: Yeah. I think we may eventually incorporate a third person in part, just also for user accessibility. because I know a lot of people… Not a lot, but definitely some people have issues with first-person and motion sickness. So it may be something that comes out of that way. But in terms of game design, I think it really was that we wanted to have that feeling of being deeply in a place and surrounded by it, and seeing it through your own eyes.

Our art director, as you can probably see from the style, was certainly influenced by Firewatch and things like that; they are inspirations and I think, while it’s definitely in no way, shape, or form a walking sim, that feeling that you get of inhabiting a world from that is something that we wanted to really preserve and have alive in the game, that you are actually there. And our game design is sort of based around… The visual design, I should say, is based around the idea that it’s not a forest. It’s the memory and the feeling of a forest. So it’s semi-impressionistic, because it’s a pet peeve of mine. This may not be interesting at all, but I find that with aliasing on leaves, no tree, to me, in a video game, has ever really looked like a tree that I’ve sat underneath. And, we wanna make the forest feel like a forest, give you that feeling and that emotion.

That’s gonna be really reinforced by our sound design as well. So our sound designer is this great young artist from sort of northern Manitoba, central Manitoba. But to most people in the world, they’ve got the north. He does an amazing amount of field recordings, this blind community that he lives in. That is being added to every soundtrack, but also to the music as well. He sorta synthesizes natural sounds, and then programs them into a synth and then builds out soundscapes and songs with it.

So, that feeling of immersion and that soul of a forest. I won’t be happy with this game unless we are forever on the top 10 forests in the videogames list, forever! It’s a high goal, but I think we made it.

Matt: You mentioned accessibility in the actual game. How did you tackle the whole motion sickness in first person, but you have red-green color blindness? That’s a big thing. And, in the wilderness, you’re not gonna have colorblind settings of berries, and certain berries are gonna be more poisonous than others, or whatnot.
So, have you incorporated the poisonous berries? Are they all healthy for you, or do they list the negatives by showing a status debuff? How have you kind of tackled that so that it still has that realism, but also reaches that accessibility?

Jeremy: For sure. Yeah. Actually, one of the early quests is because you’re in fall, there’s not actually a lot of berries left. But interestingly, there are two berries. They’re both purple-ish, and one of them is kind of poisonous if you don’t boil it. So, that’s part of the game, that you’re collecting them and the fire warns you, “Keep an eye out for them, but, you know, don’t eat them right away, because one of them will kill you.”

So there’s a little bit of guidance there. It’s kind of like a grandfather talking about that to a child, but also, not wanting to make them permanently scared of nature. But just respectful of the fact that, yeah, some things there are and nature’s deadly, sometimes.

So, when you go to harvest something in the game, there’s information on sort of what it is. Or if you don’t know what it is, there’s information saying, “Mystery berry.” Cause part of it is then discovering what’s available in each season. So you can be the person who pops that in your mouth and sees what happens, or you can decide to ask about it, learn something about it as well. Then make a choice about what you’re doing with it. Yeah.

Matt: Now, with the game being in the open stages withinthe next six months, obviously, you’re gonna be developing it, but how much of, the open world, the open environment player feedback are you gonna be looking at to, help kinda guide your development versus, you have a path in mind?

Jeremy: Yeah, for sure. I think one of the huge reasons to come to PAX was to basically see, is our path the right path? And, well, you cannot be all things to all people, and doing that is a recipe for disaster. What we’ve found by being here is that we know we have an audience. We have literally had people sit down and play for over an hour, which is a pretty impressive decision when you consider that people have paid money, often hotels, to be here, and they are choosing to do that over any other thing on the floor.

So, for me to see that and have seen that repeatedly, it’s just a great feeling to know after all this time we were very, very, very serious about being willing to say, “This is not good enough,” and continue to work on things until they were. And that’s our goal. We’re not gonna put out a demo until a new player is consistently playing the game for at least 60 minutes on their first session, because when we put out the demo on Steam, the open demo, we want everyone who plays that to play it for 60 minutes, or at least everyone who captures in that core
audience.

For people who come to this expecting something really punishing, it’s just not gonna be for them. There are lots of other games that are for them, and that’s great. There’s a game for everyone, and that’s what’s wonderful. But it’s really important to decide on who your audience is and stick to that vision.
So, I think there are things that are kind of inviolable about having a game that has an ability to play, chill, and has a meditative feel that you just fall into, but also still has that challenging state to it. And I think that’s really key, and that’s working. So that’s fantastic. But we need to balance that. There are things where how much you talk to the Fire? How much do you get help versus how much do you explore yourself?

What quests are interesting? Which ones are not? Just the pacing, the level… and what’s really great is that we invested in building out a data-driven backend to the game, because as I mentioned before with the idea of this long DLC path as well, where you’re doing this in full and carrying the fire with you basically around the world, we wanted to make sure we could build that. So, it’s very easy for us to really tune things very easily in a way that doesn’t break anything else, and a huge part of that is really getting that understanding from players .

It’s a game about how it feels, and so, literally, we want people to pick it up, start playing, and just be there and just feel how good it feels to be in that world, which is what we’re finding. There’s just something very nice, and I think it goes back to what I was saying about Dredge and Dave the Diver and a few of those games that have this nice date night loop. And it’s clear you can play for 15 minutes, and then you’re like “Ah, 15 minutes more. Ah, 15 minutes more.”

And honestly, it’s kind of a loop that I think was pioneered by mobile games in a more exploitive way, by putting in torture breaks every 15 minutes and then making you pay to pass them. But when you take that idea and you apply it to PC and console gaming, and you hit a premium that you’re not paying people to go pass a torture break, but they can just play in shorter snackable sessions, it’s actually really nice. And I think it fits with our busy world and our busy lives and our crazy world. It’s just nice to be able to know there’s something there for you that you can pick up for 15 minutes and enjoy, and if it turns out you end up having more time than you thought you did, you can keep on playing one more day.

So yeah, I think that’s those things are the heart of the game that won’t ever change, but within that, everything is open for discussion with players. And I think… One thing I don’t think I mentioned, and probably the last thing, is that within the game, in the world, you’re finding little carvings. When you throw those into the fire, it changes your dreams. And that’s one area where we’re gonna have a little bit more room for experimentation and mini-games and things like that.

So, it could be an area that allows us to incorporate a little bit broader input. So, it’s kind of focused on the core of the day and then being willing to have a little bit more experimental fun as we all do in our dreams. So, yeah.

Matt: Awesome. Thank you very much for speaking with us today.

Jeremy: Yeah. Thank you so much for talking with me. I know it was a long conversation.

Akiiwan: Survival is in development for Windows PC (via Steam), though a release date wasn’t announced.