All right, picture this: you are in the middle of the forest, luscious trees surround you allowing a faint haze from the daylight creep in through the foliage above, the sounds of the forest serve as the background noise while your friend talk to you about some new villager or the latest discovery in town. You bend down reaching out for a mushroom when you hear a different sound, a thump, a screeching and your mind rushes into that fight or flee mode... There’s an enemy nearby… It’s time to fight.

We’ve all been in this situation. Across multiple games, seeing this scene in third person, in top down, in first person, but now we are talking VR and here at Alta we believe that facing enemies in VR cannot be the same as in regular first person games. In regular games you have the classic enemy running towards you getting closer and doing an attack, if you are close, you are hit, end of the story.

In VR you can dodge that attack by twisting your body or block it with your shield and we are taking that in account. We’re creating each creature with physicality in mind, ensuring that our creatures do not attack like an invisible hitbox, but with a swing, a poke, a charge or any other move that can be evaded or deflected.

So our creatures do not simply stay put, staring at you, they actually try their best to get to you, they have unique ways to attack you and they are not to be dismissed! To face these foes you need to be extra aware to avoid damage, you need to be able to read your enemy, what’s the next attack? Where is it actually aiming? Should I give it a whack or should I prepare to block? Tip, be prepared to block, one can never block too much!

When we were designing our first demos combat and creatures were completely absent as one of the cores of A Township Tale is the social aspect, then why have creatures now? Getting it clear from the start, it’s not to just have something to kill, it’s to have something to act as an antagonist for players, something that players can band together to face and win and players don’t need to be actively swinging a battle axe to be part of a fight.

On our multiple spelunking sessions, we’ve been cornered uncountable times by multiple enemies and the team survived by having that shield bearer blocking hits. So the archers could snipe, or gatherers that looted every healing item and distributed those to friends in need. Every player and play style can have a distinct role during these encounters and every team emerges with stronger bonds after a well fought battle.

For glory! For loot! For our Township!