Wanderer - Design Philosophy and Inspirations Pt. 1

In Kickstarter update #3 Red Cloack Games tells us about the Design Philosophy and Inspirations of Wanderer:

Happy Friday all!

As we move towards the end of Week 1, we have not yet ceased to be amazed by all the momentum our awesome fans continue to generate for the project. We've pulled past 20% funded, and our humble, weird little game is starting to get coverage on all corners of the internet, including Destructoid and Kotaku! On top of that, we're almost in the top 20 games on Steam Greenlight! Wow. On behalf of Serge and myself, another massive 'thank you!' to everyone who's helped get us here. I'm sorry guys, the gratitude isn't going to stop anytime soon. Our love for you is endless.

Before we begin to take a closer look at the individual mechanics and their implementation, in today's update I want to take a small step back and speak a little bit about the genesis of Wanderer, as well as briefly explain some of the rationale behind key design decisions. It's a bit of an odd hybrid of ideas, so I just want to take a moment and walk you through the thought process behind it and the inspirations that have shaped it from a game design perspective.

If I were to craft a clumsy and slightly pretentious metaphor (and I will in fact be doing so, precisely at this very moment), I would liken the project to a carefully, delicately layered video game 'collage'. Wanderer is made up of ideas and mechanics from my favorite games and fiction both classic and modern, all tactfully assembled into a love letter that pays homage to all of it's inspirations while at the same time leveraging the synergy between those inspirations to become something unique in it's own right.

Of course, while simply taking every 'totally rad' idea you can find and throwing it into a blender might create some cool concepts in theory, 'theory' and 'reality' are two different things. We're a small team with big dreams. Dreaming big is a good thing, but if you can't actualize it then it doesn't do anyone a whole lot of good. That's why the driving force behind every design choice from top to bottom in Wanderer, from the art style to the structure of each mechanic, is about working smart and not just hard. With that in mind, let's walk through some of the thought process behind Wanderer's design.

At it's heart, and at it's very core, Wanderer owes its existence to Éric Chahi's classic gaming masterpiece 'Another World'. Another World is a huge inspiration for the project as beyond simply being a fantastic game that was way ahead of its time, it serves as a masterclass in how to do a lot with a little. As a game development team consisting of two core developers, that philosophy is extremely important, and Mr. Chahi's accomplishment (made with such limited resources and comparatively primitive tools) is astonishing and incredibly inspiring to us.  [...]

Thanks Eye!