Pure Gauge
The Elder Scrolls is my favorite game series of all time. I can not imagine anything more thrilling than exploring strange, open worlds filled with countless quests and interesting characters. And even when you've seen it all, the unparalleled support for mods ensures a steady supply of experiences and opportunity for self expression for many years. However, it's not quite enough to keep the games interesting for thirteen years - that's how long it has been since Skyrim released!
My second favorite series is the Dark Souls trilogy. Skyrim can be quite janky - which can be partially fixed with mods, but those can be brittle and require a PhD in modology to set up correctly - whereas the combat and animations in Dark Souls feel extremely smooth. More importantly though, the level design is just on another level. Elden Ring should on paper have been my dream come true: Soulsy gameplay in an open world. But I have grown tired of dead, apocalyptic worlds overrun by zombies and only a small handful of NPCs you can engage with non-violently. Where are the towns you can rest in? Where are the silly little quests about rats in basements? Where is the joy?
When you've been waiting for something for over a decade, and when there are no signs of anyone even working on it, there is only a single rational solution: do it yourself. I've had enough of waiting, so I picked up Godot. This blog will chronicle my journey.
The working title I have chosen is Pure Gauge. Mechanically, it will combine my favorite aspects of Elder Scrolls and Dark Souls, hence I call it a Scrolls-like. Thematically, I want to stay away from dark fantasy since the market is already oversaturated by it, and introduce some much needed silliness akin to the Discworld novels.
One the most important aspects for me is modding support. For one, modding is just extremely fun to do, but also let's face it: I'm not going to be able to create something on the scale of Skyrim all on my own. Instead, what I want to do is lay the groundwork and build a framework in the hope others will build upon it. Of course, modification requires something to modify first, and for that I envision creating a tiny open world. Just one small region, but dense with things to do and find and with a complete story. My first goal will be releasing a single dungeon to test out the concept and gather feedback.
The current prototype already includes many of the required core systems: quests, NPCs, dialogue, inventory, animation-driven combat, interactions, a debug console, etc. Godot is still very young and constantly evolving, making learning resources extremely sparse. Especially when it comes to 3D, developing games with Godot is pioneer work, which is why I intend to share what I learn along the way here with the rest of the community. Each of the topics above will likely receive its own post in the future.
If you have questions, suggestions, or just want to keep up with short progress updates, you can get in touch or follow me on Mastodon or Bluesky. For longer form devlogs and technical deep dives you can bookmark this blog or subscribe to the Atom feed. Thanks for reading and accompanying me on this journey!