Welcome
Today I just want to lay out what I'm doing at a very broad level, and talk about the Big Ideas of Free Range Monsters and Heretical Science.
Wait, what are those?
Heretical Science is a story I'm writing about two girls, Nikki Byron and Mariel Pierce. They're college students experimenting with a black hole generator, when their professor messes with the machine and accidentally sends all of them careening into another world that has lots of magic, but no actual technology, where the Scientific Method is considered heresy.
Free Range Monsters is set at least a hundred years in the future of Heretical Science, and is a combination between three types of game that I love:
- Homesteading - Think Stardew Valley or Sun Haven)
- 2D Adventure Games - Legend of Zelda is top of this list, but also Secret of Mana, Alundra, CrossCode and many others.
- Monster Hunter (Stories) - Monster Hunter is my favorite franchise by far, but I kind of wish there was more of a taming/breeding aspect like this old gameboy game I used to play, Dragon Warrior Monsters.
What do I need to know about Heretical Science?
The overall backdrop of Free Range Monsters comes from Heretical Science, so that's what we're going to touch on here.
The world of Heretical Science is called Suicury.
The country of Holea was once ruled by a single church, the Church of the Living One.
Who is the Living One you might ask? Well, in the early days of Suicury there was once a great war of gods. Beings of unfathomable power argued and fought for what the world should look like, but in place of words were storms, volcanic eruptions, and destructive magic. The world did exist before the Pantheon War, but nobody but the dragons know what it used to look like. Now massive canyons scar the land, and the bodies of gods litter the planet, forming rivers, mountains, islands, and other geographical features of Suicury.
There was one survivor, whose name has long since been forgotten, the Living One. The Living one formed a cult of the survivors, not gods but regular people, just trying to make a life. That cult turned into a religion, and the survivors went from a city-state to a conquering empire, spread across the face of Suicury.
The defeat of said cult, and the overthrow of said empire, is the subject of Heretical Science. It is also not important to Free Range Monsters. What you do need to know of this is that Nikki Byron and Mariel Pierce introduced the world to the Scientific Method, to technology, alchemy, and many other sciences, forming Aetherology as a field, and magitech.
The player will be dealing with a remnant of the Holean Empire.
What do I need to know about Free Range Monsters?
Finally, we get to the game I'm making. Free Range Monsters is, at its core, about four pillars.
- Fight - The player will have to use weapons and fight monsters.
- Farm - The player will have to manage a modest farm to create food and potions for themselves, as well as money.
- Flirt - There are a lot of characters in Free Range Monsters, many of whom the player can flirt with, and even eventually marry.
- Fabricate - The player will have to use various crafting systems to create potions and equipment. The basics are available at a general store, but this is an island that airships can't reach. A lot will have to be made here.
What's next for this place?
Well, I'd like to document my progress, wax poetic about learning how to art, document various techniques I'm using and their sources, and talk about things as I go. Maybe eventually this moves off of neocities and onto its own site. But for now, this is what we have.