Back in School (www.sofe.se) me and my friends decided to do a project together. We worked with a name that could seem futuristic, yet not overhyped and weird, we also wanted Earth to be the focus. For those who doesn’t know (I can’t understand how?) Tellus is one of Earths many names. Tell’us is thus a play on word, and to be even more obvious, the under title makes sure none miss what the game is about.
Time Era: This is a game slightly into the future, not star trek, not star wars or anything like that, probably at most a couple of hundreds or max a 1000 years from now. It is a story about a ordinary woman who got entwined in the very fate of Earth itself.
Historical/political background: Humanity haven’t united in a big happy family, but resources are better planed, better shared and distributed, sure there is always political agendas and strive for power, but over all there are very few wars and the borders between countries are different from what we are accustomed too. Artificially grown meat, plants, fabrics remove the need for large farms, even though some still prefer the natural taste and feel of things, the price of natural products are a lot higher and limited to special events or privileged people. More people have gathered in large cities as large areas have been set to wild reserves or natural protected areas where building or exploiting the land is limited or forbidden after previous ecological disasters.
Who we are playing: Our heroine is part of a repair team who are mainly responsible to maintain and support automatic facilities all over the globe like power stations, communication hubs, deep space telemetry, mining and automated production facilities.
What we are doing: It’s a ordinary job with slightly different work hours and places and it contains the use of ordinary everyday skills like welding, patching of cables, fixing electronic equipment, computer operations and simple Exo* assisted tasks like heavy lifts, climbing and jumping.
Where we will start our story: Our story starts in the HQ, where our heroine is going to a basic physical and item check, to make sure everything is up to specs. This is basically a part for the player to learn the moves in the game, climbing, running, rolling, pulling themselves up ledges, activating buttons and basic combat.
Where do we go from here: Ones the the basic tutorial is done, the player is guided towards the briefing room, where the current objective is set out. Apparently, a large rockslide has disabled one of the major communication centres in (name), the team is to go there, assess the damage, call in necessary replacement parts and get everything up and running again.
And this is here the real story starts.
*Exo stands for Exoskeleton, a simple metallic framework connected along the users body to flexible but tough parts of the users clothes. Its common amongst young kids to exaggerate the strength of the Exo a lot. While it can assist the user with lifting or moving objects up to a 100 kg, the real strength of the Exo is to remove the strain from the user with the help of lockable joints and weight balancing.
