Making Of PETRACAL: Crawling Simulator Inspired By Cave Exploration Videos
FeralSquid told us how it created PETRACAL, a game where you crawl through caves and draw your own map, discussing its immersive design and sharing tips for developers.
Introduction
It all started as a group of friends with a passion for video games, with a great passion for creating things that they found interesting and who had always wanted to make games, until they finally decided to take a step beyond just playing.
So far, our only commercial project has been PETRACAL, but we have been working for years on various personal and non-commercial projects to improve our skills.
PETRACAL
PETRACAL is an immersive game that presents a demanding challenge to the player, who must manage all of their resources, from their position to the resources they must consume.
Watching first-person cave exploration videos and seeing how these explorers had to map, navigate, and carefully venture through the caves, we eventually thought that doing it as a dungeon crawler would be interesting since you're crawling and the dungeon is a cave.
Challenging games such as Jump King, dungeon crawler games such as Legend of Grimrock, and first-person cave exploration videos led us to decide that we wanted to give players a claustrophobic first-person experience.
One of the things that sets PETRACAL apart from the rest is its dungeon crawler genre, where the player moves around on tiles, as well as the mechanics of drawing your own map to find your way around the levels, among other things, such as its PSX style.
Players who enjoy challenges, meticulous players, and people who are willing to take on a challenge and complete it will enjoy PETRACAL. They can expect "immersive" level design, constant suspense, frustration when navigating, tension when facing dangers, and satisfaction when overcoming challenges. It's a simple yet haunting story of physical and mental confinement.
We gathered basic information on the type of equipment, the things that are usually left behind in mines, as well as the fauna and flora of the caves, for the level design.
Since the cave was very similar in several places, we decided to add new mechanics, such as GPS, mining beams, and glowing mushrooms, among others, to help players navigate.
Draft of the map, previously it would have stickers to make it easier to mark locations, and after some playtesting we decided to also add GPS
Mechanics
The game features:
- Crawl movement, where the player can only crawl.
We found the idea of players drawing their own maps interesting and hadn't explored it in other games, so we decided not to give players a map. We feel that current maps tend to compromise the designers' original vision in order to reach a wider audience, turning interesting quests into a list of tasks that the player must remove from their screen.
- Manual mapping, the player has to draw their own map to find their way around the levels.
- Resource management, the player has to manage their resources carefully.
- Audio, sound is another important part, as many objects and progression points are linked to sound.
The audio design was conceived with the aim of providing greater immersion within the game. It was crafted by hand to achieve sounds that feel organic, as well as a soundtrack that highlights the character's loneliness.
Throughout the development, the inventory changed from 3D to 2D, items such as the compass became part of the HUD instead of being unique items. In older versions, the game took the player's legs into account to prevent them from spinning freely, but when it was found that this did not work well with players, it was changed. Many of the dream illustrations are dreams that have been had. To date, QA testers are still scared of the enemy. The main character is based on a friend of ours.
The illustration creation process: one of the things we are most proud of is that everything you see in our project, from the art and modeling to the programming, is 100% human-made, as we do not use AI for any of our processes.
Feedback
The reception has exceeded our expectations. Many content creators, from the biggest in Latin America to creators from other parts of the world, have played PETRACAL. We have been well-received on Steam, and media outlets have reviewed our game in several languages.
Based on feedback, we made changes by adding items such as GPS to help improve orientation, streams to aid navigation, and beams for better navigation and immersion.
We will soon be adding more game modes, as well as a game mode where the map is already drawn, and you just have to navigate to discover it.
Tips for Developers
The best advice we can give new developers is to know the limits of development and make sure all their ideas are well-grounded.
Don't underestimate how much good planning can impact a project, especially if it's a game that you may be working on for a long time and with several people.
You should start with creating micro-games, practicing, and documenting the games you want to create before you start creating them – it doesn't matter if they are simple games, as long as you improve your development method.
Another point that can help many people get into game jams is that it doesn't matter if your skills are basic; there are always people looking to create, and skill level is never a barrier in game jams.
There are project incubation groups, where more experienced developers support new developers to improve their development until launch, on a non-profit basis.
