DEVLOG 1: Development Process & Playtesting
We wanted to emulate the feel of the old Oregon trail games with our development of an Oregon trail like game. Oregon trail is a retro video game where you have a group of people going along the Oregon trail and have to collect food and run checks to pass through the terrain of the map and keep your crew alive. We took this idea and made some changes to the formula to put our own spin on it. We wanted to create a more visual experience with procedural generation to give a unique experience each time you play the game. We also wanted to give the player a bit more to do with being able to freely move and interact with rocks and enemies in order to complete the tasks in the game.

However, the development process for our game came with some hurdles throughout the development. The original plan for our game was to use fully procedurally generated terrain which would allow us to have seemingly infinite replayability without repeated terrain structures which can sometimes cut into the fun of the game. Below are images showcasing the original mockups of procedural generation.

Due to challenges we ran across with this method we made the swap to preset landscapes that are cycled through at random in order to do our endless terrain.

We also were planning to add the possibility to move the path of the wagon off of the straight line collision to make it a bit more like the game Unrailed but going forward the technical difficulties would lead to too many issues and ultimately scrapped the idea leading to the wagon moving on a straight path.