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Xik
Mar 10, 2011

Dinosaur Gum


Introduction

NEO Scavenger is a turn-based, isometric survival RPG set in a post-apocalyptic setting. It's currently in development by Daniel Fedor (BlueBottleGames on SA), an ex-BioWare employee who worked on AAA RPG titles for 7 years prior to setting up Blue Bottle Games. NEO is available cross-platform, it's accessible via the browser or downloadable as a Windows, Mac OSX or Linux binary.

Quick Links

Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2K3mihtzrA

Features:

Open world, turn based exploration (with hexes!):

The game world is large and completely open to player exploration. Including a fairly large (and growing) amount of unique encounters and progression.



Hand-drawn pixel art:

Encounter screens and locations have some gorgeous hand drawn pixel art.







Engaging Combat:

NEO has fairly involved combat. It sports combat abilities, weapons, movement, even intimidation and hiding. This coupled with an expanded combat log and various conditions like "Coughing Blood", "Concussion", "Severe Pain", among others, makes for an engaging combat system.



Perma-death and "Challenging Gameplay":

The game can be tough, especially when you are just learning the ropes and you will no doubt die many times before you begin to make any reasonable progress. Even the feature page on the official site "warns" players:

quote:

NEO Scavenger is not an easy game. You will not be told what to do, or how to survive. There is no hand-holding, and nobody's got your back. Mistakes quickly turn into death in the apocalypse. And when you die, that's it. Game over.



Resource and Inventory Management:

Remember the micro managing of resources and items in games of lore? It's back! Inventory slots and item weight play a large role. Player condition is paramount; hunger, thirst, temperature, comfort, sleep and injuries all need to be managed.



Character Customization:

NEO features an ability and trait system for character customization. Experiment with various character skills to unlock different options during regular gameplay and in various encounters. For the masochist, there is even the ability to gimp your character with negative traits, unlocking extra slots for abilities.



And more...

There is also an extensive crafting system, ability to set up player camps, scavenging and trapping. The best part is that since NEO is still in development, new features are added on a regular basis. You (the player) also have the ability to vote on upcoming features via feature voting.

Want in?

If you are convinced this might be something you are interested in, give the demo a go. It's kept up to date with the beta, so it contains all the major features. If after playing the demo you would like to buy into the beta, you can do so directly from the developer, via Desura or through Steam. Note that buying directly through the developer will net you give you access to the DRM free version and also Desura and Steam keys.

Xik fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Mar 26, 2014

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GoodluckJonathan
Oct 31, 2003

I'm glad a thread was made for this. I played the demo a few days ago and really enjoyed it. Can anyone who has bought the game say how much further the story line goes after the demo ends?

Xik
Mar 10, 2011

Dinosaur Gum

Wachepti posted:

I'm glad a thread was made for this. I played the demo a few days ago and really enjoyed it. Can anyone who has bought the game say how much further the story line goes after the demo ends?

Where does the demo end? I threw my money at it before actually doing any part of the story. The current story in the beta doesn't go further then after getting the visitor pass, the city is "under orange alert" so you can't actually enter it yet. I assume that is in place while the game is still in development.

Fewd
Mar 22, 2007

#vmp #opsec #kolmiloikka #happoo
Huh, just started a new game. Tracking + hiding in the first room got me a pretty sweet 900$ medkit thing.

Going with trapping, tracking, hiding, lockpicking and medic this time, with the fragile thing.

GoodluckJonathan
Oct 31, 2003

Yeah that's where the demo ends as well. I can definitely see myself getting this after it's been developed a bit more.

Kris xK
Apr 23, 2010
I love that its turn based, now I can agonize over every decision for hours. Once I get home I’ll try the demo, and if its half decent Ill probably be throwing money at my monitor on the weekend.

Fewd
Mar 22, 2007

#vmp #opsec #kolmiloikka #happoo
drat it all to hell.

I was sick and nearly dead from thirst when I threw my last effort into searching a very promising looking forest cabin. Result? The roof collapses, nearly killing me and a raider comes looking at the noise.

Excuse me while I lie down and die.

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

Fewd posted:

Excuse me while I lie down and die.

Don't trip. :)



This game, the person who made this game literally ready my mind. Fun but absurd.

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



I was finally doing well, heading east with my backpack full of awesome and medkit and several melee weapons. I drank some water and settled down to sleep in an abandoned office building.

YOU HAVE DIED OF CHOLERA out of freaking nowhere.

This game rules.

Blooshoo
May 15, 2004
I'm a newbie
What a wonky cool game :) It's interesting how when you buy it you can vote on future features. I did the $25 one because I like supporting indies and I like getting IRL mail, I never get irl mail anymore :smith:

Pochoclo
Feb 4, 2008

No...
Clapping Larry
Hey, this looks neat. It's like the bastard child of Burntime and Project Zomboid, which is great.

GoodluckJonathan
Oct 31, 2003

Apparently you need to purify your water or that will happen.

Should we spoiler this survival stuff? It's a lot of fun figuring out how it works on your own imo

Xik
Mar 10, 2011

Dinosaur Gum
^^^^^ Beat me to it Wachepti, yeah I think crafting recipes and survival tips like that should probably be spoiler tagged.

Achmed Jones posted:

I was finally doing well, heading east with my backpack full of awesome and medkit and several melee weapons. I drank some water and settled down to sleep in an abandoned office building.

YOU HAVE DIED OF CHOLERA out of freaking nowhere.

This game rules.

If you want to know the probable source of your cholera:

It's quite likely the water you drank. You shouldn't drink the item which is named "water" it needs to be "purified water". You can find purified water in some drink bottles or you can purify the normal "water" yourself. To purify the water you:can either use purifying pills which can (very rarely) be salvaged or the easier method of boiling the water by putting it in a metal sauce pan or can and crafting it with a campfire. You'll have crafted purified water which is what you should then drink.

VVVV The game freely gives out recipes as a random item so perhaps you are right.

Xik fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Mar 16, 2012

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:
I don't think it should be spoiled. This game feels like the original Zelda or King's Field or Demon's Souls where talking about it with friends to help figure out stuff is part of the point.

Tarquinn
Jul 3, 2007

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."



Hell Gem
This game looks so early/mid 90's in style and gameplay, that I cannot help myself not to love it. :)

Fintilgin
Sep 29, 2004

Fintilgin sweeps!
I got a medkit in the first area where you wake up but I couldn't actually figure out how to USE it.


Also, this game seems really cool, but drat is the interface clunky. It's also really irritating how you can scale it smoothy up to full screen without text and stuff getting hideous. There are so many tiny items.

Still, it's pretty fun to wander around with a plastic shopping bag full of dirty water and gummi bears, hiding from mutants and trying to survive the night!

Blooshoo
May 15, 2004
I'm a newbie

Fintilgin posted:

I got a medkit in the first area where you wake up but I couldn't actually figure out how to USE it.


Also, this game seems really cool, but drat is the interface clunky. It's also really irritating how you can scale it smoothy up to full screen without text and stuff getting hideous. There are so many tiny items.

Still, it's pretty fun to wander around with a plastic shopping bag full of dirty water and gummi bears, hiding from mutants and trying to survive the night!

Think you just "consume" the medkit. atleast that's what I've been doing anyway.

Xik
Mar 10, 2011

Dinosaur Gum
^^^^^ Beaten again :argh:

Fintilgin posted:

I got a medkit in the first area where you wake up but I couldn't actually figure out how to USE it.


"Consume" it.

You can also put it in your hand to view the individual charges in it. Which means if you find multiple kits and they each have only one refill in them you can transfer it into a single kit to conserve inventory space.

Fintilgin
Sep 29, 2004

Fintilgin sweeps!
Ugh. So obvious. I'll remember that next time. Thanks.

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



Re: water and cholera, yeah, I figured that out, but it was after I died of course :negative:

Still can't figure out how to build a fire without a lighter though. I'd love a tip!

Achmed Jones fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Mar 16, 2012

Jedrick
Mar 21, 2010

:420: There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high-powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
Smoke weed every day.
:420:
I died of starvation, dehydration and heat stroke while fighting a looter. Amazing.

Wildtortilla
Jul 8, 2008
This game is making it impossible for me to play it. I've signed up for an account with both of my email accounts. Both times the NEO website tells me an email has been sent to me with my password in it and both times I have no received any emails. There's nothing in my spam folders either. :(

Xik
Mar 10, 2011

Dinosaur Gum

Wildtortilla posted:

This game is making it impossible for me to play it. I've signed up for an account with both of my email accounts. Both times the NEO website tells me an email has been sent to me with my password in it and both times I have no received any emails. There's nothing in my spam folders either. :(

How long has it been? If you want to preemptively white-list the email, your account details should come from the address
pre:
noreply@bluebottlegames.com

Jedrick posted:

I died of starvation, dehydration and heat stroke while fighting a looter. Amazing.

I didn't know you could have more then one death "trigger". Did it all happen on an end of turn?

Naar
Aug 19, 2003

The Time of the Eye is now
Fun Shoe
I'm pretty sure that's a bug. I liked the demo a lot but the UI is terrible, if that gets sorted out I'll definitely support the dude.

quote:

Still can't figure out how to build a fire without a lighter though. I'd love a tip!
You can't, sorry!

Unsmart
Oct 6, 2006

Xik posted:

How long has it been? If you want to preemptively white-list the email, your account details should come from the address
pre:
noreply@bluebottlegames.com
I didn't know you could have more then one death "trigger". Did it all happen on an end of turn?

That's just what it says if you are killed by an enemy in the demo.

Xik
Mar 10, 2011

Dinosaur Gum

Naar posted:

I liked the demo a lot but the UI is terrible, if that gets sorted out I'll definitely support the dude.

Yeah, the UI is in serious need of some love, but I'm pretty confident it will be fixed up. He seems very responsive on the forums and has been listening to player feedback, making changes based on that.

marijuanamancer
Sep 11, 2001

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Is there any randomization? This sounds a lot like a roguelike minus that, I look forward to trying it when I get home.

Blooshoo
May 15, 2004
I'm a newbie

decrypt key posted:

Is there any randomization? This sounds a lot like a roguelike minus that, I look forward to trying it when I get home.

The hex map seems pretty random besides quest points.

DeltaOmega
Oct 22, 2007
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE READ THE STUFF ON THE RIGHT!!!
I like how you can use melee or strong for the first encounter and you get rewarded with an item "a video recording of you kicking rear end".

El Belmondo
Apr 3, 2011

by XyloJW
As far as I know, rest+healing does absolutely nothing, and you'll simply wait until you turn hypothermic and die.

I've had a couple of games where I can get a couple of resources and clothes, but injuries never heal and it also drops your actions, so you are eventually overrun by a swarm of looters.

A shame, because I really like survivalist games.

apophenium
Apr 14, 2009
Well I guess this pretty much confirms that I would die horribly in some kind of post-apocalyptic world. I never found any pants so I was freezing to death. It actually ended up being okay cause I had terrible diarrhea from drinking impure water. Then I died of dehydration. This game seems pretty cool, and I might be willing to put the $10 for it down the line.

GoodluckJonathan
Oct 31, 2003

El Belmondo posted:

As far as I know, rest+healing does absolutely nothing, and you'll simply wait until you turn hypothermic and die.

I've had a couple of games where I can get a couple of resources and clothes, but injuries never heal and it also drops your actions, so you are eventually overrun by a swarm of looters.

A shame, because I really like survivalist games.

Yeah, after an hour or so of fooling around I still can't figure out how to heal. I've never seen a medkit either. I have gotten some antibiotics a few times, I assume that would help with cholera but I died of other things before I could test it.

Unsmart
Oct 6, 2006

El Belmondo posted:

As far as I know, rest+healing does absolutely nothing, and you'll simply wait until you turn hypothermic and die.

I've had a couple of games where I can get a couple of resources and clothes, but injuries never heal and it also drops your actions, so you are eventually overrun by a swarm of looters.

A shame, because I really like survivalist games.

Rest+Heal is just the equivalent of pressing Space Bar to end your turn over and over. And yeah, since there appears to be no completely natural healing, you should never use it. I haven't found any but there may be bandages and stuff you can find/make that give you a healing condition like the nanokit.

So if you want to get anywhere in the demo, for sure, and actually get to try it either run from everything or take Medic since it gets you healing nanos in the starter room.

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA
This game does look pretty awesome, actually. I am glad you posted about it in the Wasteland 2 thread so I could hear about it in the first place! I imagine there will be a lot of overlap between this game and that one in the fanbase.

Prokhor Zakharov
Dec 31, 2008

This is me as I make another great post


Good luck with your depression!
This game gets real annoying when you're starving, dehydrated, and nude yet some raider pops outta nowhere and suddenly makes it his life mission to chase you for miles so that he can loot my sweet sweet collection of 3 empty plastic bags and collection of sticks from my emaciated corpse.

I mean seriously these guys are way way too aggressive to be realistic.

Fintilgin
Sep 29, 2004

Fintilgin sweeps!
Newspapers should roll up to water bottle size, not take up the entire backpack. :mad:

BlueBottleGames
Mar 16, 2012

NEO Scavenger Dev
Hey Guys! Dan from Blue Bottle Games here. Blooshoo emailed me about this thread, so thanks to him for the heads-up! And thanks to Xik for the thread!

This is a really good summary of the game, especially with the list of gotchas and screengrabs to help explain to new users. The bits mentioned under "Player Tips" are some of the most frequently asked questions, so excellent work!

Also, it seems like most of the questions folks have here have been aptly answered by other posters, so I'll try not to be redundant.

Re: the clunky interface, sorry! I agree it has a *long* way to go before it's smooth-sailing in that dept. It's already been though quite a few iterations, but even so, people are noticing issues that I never thought of (or even my testers). So hang in there, more improvements are on the way!

No fire without a lighter, Achmed. At least, not yet! It's something that's been on my list a while, actually, just lower on the priorities.

@Jedrick: that multi-death is my #1 mystery bug. I can't repro it reliably in order to capture it in the debugger. Frustrating!

@Wildtortilla, I think we sorted out your account woes over email, but if not, email me again and we'll see what we can do!

Re: randomization, there is some. The map always has the same quest locations and coastline, but quite a bit of the game is randomized (hex types, loot, creatures, weather, etc.). The quests are deterministic, but the scavenge results are chance-based. And many of the conditions that progressively worsen have chances of worsening vs. not between stages. So, I guess it's not too far from a roguelike, depending on how you read it.

Healing takes a *long* time, though one doesn't have to sit still to do so. The Rest+Heal button works as Megaflare says: it just fast-forwards the turns until either you heal a wound, or a condition/monster appears. Also, getting wounded again resets the healing timer (I know, I know, I'm a killer DM. Guilty as charged!)

And Prokhor, that post had me laughing so hard I was shaking. FYI, the tracking skill may be useful to you. It'll not only reveal more of the enemies' tracks, but it also helps conceal yours, making it harder for them to track you once you're out of sight. And in the beta, the hiding skill enables sneak mode, which helps prevent them from bee-lining it to you if they have line of sight. Oh, and no matter what, all creatures have a slight chance of screwing up tracking/following, so there's a chance to escape for even non-tracker builds. Just beware that certain conditions (like diarrhea and severe wounds) pretty much kill any chance of you hiding your tracks. Hard to cover the smell!

Glad you guys found the game, and glad I found you! Hope you enjoy, and thanks for all the awesome feedback!

Xik
Mar 10, 2011

Dinosaur Gum

Megaflare posted:

And yeah, since there appears to be no completely natural healing

There is definitely natural healing to an extent (the medic trait increases natural healing too), I've recovered from injuries without using a med-kit on numerous occasions. Perhaps if you get injured enough (down to red?) it may not heal unless you deal to it.

Looks like I was beaten by Dan while writing this so yeah, it's confirmed. There is natural healing.

Fintilgin posted:

Newspapers should roll up to water bottle size, not take up the entire backpack. :mad:

Newspapers probably should just always be rolled up and take up a single "line". You don't really need to carry newspaper around though, using newspaper is probably the least efficient way to light a fire. You can find twigs on almost every tile which you can use instead, which is why it's strange it takes up so much space.

I just tried to see how long I could survive taking all the negative traits. It went surprisingly well until I got shot by a raider by taking an unnecessary risk, serves me right.


I also came across this little gem:



BlueBottleGames posted:

And thanks to Xik for the thread!

No problem, I must admit, I'm becoming quite the fan of NEO Scavenger. It's great that you are so receptive to feedback and going out of the way to listen to the players. I hope you see much success from the game.

Orgone Accumulator
Jan 28, 2006

It's been a long time coming.
You know it'd be kinda neat if you had the option to either surrender to a looter when in bad shape or have them be able to incapacitate you, and in both cases end up with a chance for them to just take most of your stuff and leave you alone, especially if you could encounter them again later or try to track them down to get your poo poo back.

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a whole buncha crows
May 8, 2003

WHEN WE DON'T KNOW WHO TO HATE, WE HATE OURSELVES.-SA USER NATION (AKA ME!)
Really fun change of pace, I'm in for the Beta.

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