Development of the kickstarter funded tentacle city simulation game Octopus City Blues is moving along smoothly, and the team at Ghost in a Bottle have published a pretty thorough update.
Since the conclusion of their kickstarter, they have put out two alpha versions of the game to the beta testers who funded the game, and they’re currently working on porting the game engine to run on Linux and Mac OS X. The latest build of the game saw the addition of the Clock Tower Plaza, a huge central hub for the entire game, and the largest area in all of Octopus City Blues.
Ghost in a Bottle also shared several new screenshots for the game:
The knowledge system within the game was also thoroughly detailed:
As Kaf observes and talks to people throughout the city, he learns certain “factoids” about them, and they’re added into his journal. These factoids are similar to items, they can be acquired by multiple avenues including conversation, observation, and of course reading books or newspapers. One important bit of information to make a note of is the schedules of various NPCs, as you’ll need to know where they’ll be at a certain time of day, in case you need to eavesdrop on their conversations.
As you can imagine, factoids will become very important as you explore more of the Octopus City, and there are lots of people who are in the business of selling or trading gossip, or information. Kaf can just share factoids with NPCs, or he can use them for advancing himself in conversation, as revealing certain information to the right NPC can definitely change up the dialogue choices quite a bit. As you learn even more new factoids, older ones become obsolete, or updated, or even changed. Naturally, Kaf can also try to pass off gossip or lies as a legitimate factoid, but if he’s caught it can get him or others in a lot of trouble.
We did an interview with the Ghost in a Bottle CEO regarding Octopus City Blues, which you can read here. If you missed the boat funding the game during its kickstarter campaign, you can still fund it via paypal here.
