The creek in the valley has frozen over, and since the last post the look test has grown into the first playable build of Frostkeeper. You walk the same valley you see in the pictures on this site, gather wood, light a fire and try to stay warm through the night.
The frozen creek
The creek runs along the old road, about seven metres from it, a metre or two across under the ice. On the first try its banks were cut at almost 40 degrees, which stretched the snow texture and painted bare rock where there should be snow. The banks now ease down over a couple of metres and stay under about 30 degrees, so the snow runs right down to the ice.
The ice has a shader of its own. Most of the creek is frozen, with snow drifted along it, bubbles and cracks a few centimetres down and darker water moving underneath. In a few places it opens into leads of black water with slush drifting on them. Ripples strong enough to see in a still picture looked like hatching, so the water shows that it moves through the drifting slush and a faint shimmer instead. Measured in the same build, the creek costs no frame time we could find.
From a look test to a game
The look test was one valley, a fixed camera and a red capsule standing in for the survivor. That valley is now the ground every run is played on. Each new run grows its own forest, rocks, cabins and loot from a seed, around places that stay where they are.
The capsule is gone too. The survivor is a real character now, dressed in clothes made for the game, and what he wears is what keeps him alive. In the current build you can gather sticks, light and feed a fire, cook on it, melt snow for water, hunt a hare with stones and butcher it, keep wolves back with fire or a torch, fell trees, cure hides, build a shelter that holds the warmth, set snares and find clothing as you go.
The cold is what you are up against. Without warm clothes, a night at fifteen below empties your warmth in about eleven minutes of play, and a fire fills it again in about five. By day you have closer to an hour.
Weather with rules
In the look test we picked the weather. In the game it runs on its own: calm spells of clear sky, light cloud or wind, and storms that build into a blizzard and blow out again. The weather is part of the rules as well as the look. The wind chills you faster, a match will not light in a gale, and an open fire left out in one burns faster until the wind blows it out.
Co-op for two to four players is built in, with the host's game deciding the weather, the fires and everything else that matters. So far it has been tested with two copies of the game on one PC, and the next test is two PCs over Steam.