INK COMPANIONS? WHAT IS THAT
INTRO
Pretty excited about this first post! This blog will be the place to find news about Ink Companions, which is a game I’ve been working on and thinking about for a while now.
By the end of this post, you’ll know what Ink Companions is, where you can find more info on its current state, and the plans for what is to come.
(Outside Scene) Behind the Arcade
WHAT IS THIS?
Ink Companions is an online virtual pet simulator game, where you’ll try to keep your virtual pet alive as well as explore and play games in the outside world.
While being with friends, you can chat and soon you’ll be able to do more things like play mini-games or find hidden items scattered around.
INSPIRATIONS
The core two gameplay mechanics—the virtual pet and the outside world—are very heavily inspired by two games that I and many other people have fond memories of.
VIRTUAL PET
First, of course, my influence for this is Tamagotchi. I love Tamagotchis; the feel and experience of first playing with them just feels promising.
But after time using it, even if I’m trying to love it, I still get bored of them. So it just ends up sitting on my shelf in its digital ghost form. But at least I can admire the shell it comes in.
OUTSIDE WORLD
My influence for the outside world is Club Penguin & in general the multiplayer flash games of that time, like ToonTown and Habbo Hotel—that kind of genre for games.
But I personally spent most of my time on Club Penguin growing up, so I’ll be favoring those mechanics more than the rest of the games I mentioned (but some may slip through).
VIDEO EXAMPLE
Here’s a quick video of the very base gameplay examples I have so far (before pre-alpha coming soon):
WHY MAKE THIS?
Yeah, those games I mentioned above are fun, and you can go play them right now. Even Club Penguin still gets hosted online by fans, and you can play at any state of its history.
But the simple fact is that these games are made for kids. And kids grow up and will get bored of the IPs they loved as a child. And you can go back to it for a bit, but we’ve experienced all of this already, so it will only be a matter of time before you log off for the last time.
Also, combining these great games and adding my own ideas onto this foundation is a great way to keep them alive for an even longer time.
I have been finding the voice of this game, and I would say this is not an outright horror game. But… it will have its moments. In general, it will be a darker world that you can explore, instead of the more bright and colorful world that you would find in my inspiration games.
And no hate to any of my inspiration games, of course. I love them, and that’s why I am making this game. I will always be a fan of them and for them. But I just wanted to make something that is more dynamic, a bit more mature, and with just a pinch of psychological horror.
MECHANICS
Currently, I have these mechanics:
- Randomized pets and random aging
- Wearable items: hats (shoes, behind, etc - coming soon)
- Customizable features not specific to the character (Pop-Up Backgrounds)
- Login account system + Save system
- Multiplayer scenes, chatting with users
- & more I’m sure I forgot
I have more in the works now as well that I’ll make a post about once it’s done (some also got shown in the video above).
TECH STACK (FOR WHO WANTS TO KNOW)
Game Engine: Unity, which has C# as the main scripting language.
Backend: is running on Ruby on Rails 8, which has Ruby as the main scripting language.
Hosting Unity online with: React (for now)
UP NEXT
I have a bunch of plans for what’s to come with this game. The video above just scrapes the surface and shows my work on the foundation of this game that I’ve been finalizing.
The next stage is to bring this to pre-alpha and get it to be live. I just have a few more things to tune and polish before getting it to that state. But stay tuned—I’ll be posting here about it as I go.
A big point is that when it’s out of pre-alpha, I will be trying to port this game to as many platforms as possible, so you can play it on your phone, tablet, or computer.
I just like Web the best, so we are starting there.
CONCLUSION
Hopefully, this gives you an idea of what this game even is and what it looks like so far.
I’ve also been having fun with the design side of this, if you couldn’t tell. If you’re curious about this side more, I will also make a separate post just about the design aspects once I finalize some more of the design choices. But yeah, it’s all in black and white—no color is gonna be in this game.
If you are interested in this game please join our Discord server! It’s very early in the development, but this will be the go to place to chat with me and other people who are interested in this game.
Thank you!!