This is a development sandbox for the game yet to be named. If you would like to contribute to the code, art, or storyline please feel free to fork the repository into your own Github account, then submit a pull request with your changes.
Specific information on the codebase, database, and other components can be found in the readmes inside their respective folders.
Grove is a 16-bit, top-down, open world, horror adventure game where you awaken as a spirit, just dropped into the afterlife. You have no knowledge of who or what you were in your past. To discover yourself, and why/how you died, you must collect artifacts from the four cardinal directions and bring them to a central location to be assembled by the enigmatic and mysterious antique shop owner who is your guide in this shaded and unsettling world.
Everything around you is gray. You blink your eyes a few times, but nothing changes. There is no sound, no light. Just looming gray structures. There are also, things, darker gray shadows moving around you, but they just go past. You even reach out to touch one, but it goes right through your arm. You wander the gray streets, when finally, you see a faint light. You follow it. The light is emanating from a small shop hunched in an alley. A small sign creaks above the door, barely holding on to the metal post it is secured to. Its faded letters proclaim it "Night Traders". You walk up to the window. The light that emanates from the interior is warm. That glow saturates everything inside and gives everything a cared for appearance. The door seems to open of its own accord and beacons you inside. The ceiling is low, but the length of the store belies how tiny it looks on the outside. The walls are packed with things, all manner of things. Furniture, from all ages that no one could ever picture in their home until it is placed there. Art, glassware, knick-knacks, all the usual things you expect from an antique shop. But these things all have stories, some more fantastical than others. And, if you find the right thing, the thing meant for you, the shop keeper, as hunched and small as the outside of the shop, will tell you that story. When the shop keeper sees the shade, they shake their head and tell the shade they shouldn’t be there. Their story is no longer in the shop but scattered to the four corners of the world. Shade must go to each cardinal direction and retrieve the artifacts that will reveal who they were and what happened to them. Here is where the player is introduced to basic game mechanics and the ghost cat companion whose abilities level up with Shade’s
Once all the artifacts are collected and assembled, it is revealed that Shade was once a witch whose parents and self were wrongfully murdered by the villagers. These villagers performed a ritual to split Shade’s soul to keep them from coming back. Now the village is revealed to Shade, they may haunt it by performing the acts that they and their parents were wrongfully accused of to take revenge.
7.Open World: Village Haunting/Destruction
Shade may continue to gather items from around the game world and use them to perform spells that allow them to haunt and terrorize the villagers.
Notes: Specific enemies, puzzles, challenges, and artifacts are still being worked out.
The game will eventually be served in containers, but for now, the following technologies need to be installed on your machine to run the game: