While waiting for more on Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street and studio Fantastic Pixel Castle’s first project, Ghost, maybe listen to a podcast. The Word on the Street podcast sometimes offers an overall view on development, projects, and even a few deeper hints from time to time on what they’re building.
In the latest episode of Word on the Street, Greg Street and Scott Johnson talk to Candace Thomas, the game’s design director and touch on “blue zones” and some of their design philosophy.
With the concept of blue zones and red zones, the team makes clear what the difference is and their approach. Red zones are what they consider traditional MMO content of a more default, static nature. You know where everything is, where the world bosses will spawn, where to get certain resources, and the world doesn't change very much in those zones. Johnson acknowledges that there’s a comfort In learning a zone, where all the POIs are, returning back to the city you saved and maybe having role-playing experiences there. FPC is not looking to take away from any of that. They’re adding to them.
Blue zones represent one of the ways in which they are looking to innovate in the genre. Red zones will remain, but blue zones will feature much more randomly generated, dynamic content, location-based objectives, and an overall offering that departs from linear gameplay.
They address several potential questions, including whether someone would know that they were transitioning from a red zone to a blue zone, and also how progression systems would work with these mechanics.
The full conversation is worth listening to, including the community questions. Someone brings up non-combat roles and class flexibility. One aspect cited is making sure that different classes are viable for different roles and different content. Maybe there's no Hunter today, but maybe an Archer can do something similar and serve that team. Types of progression also got mentioned, including the zone content and the Shard system. Star Wars Galaxies and Final Fantasy came up, and even the indie title Wayward Strand, to give a bit of the range of what has inspired the team here. Wayward Strand was cited for its “immersive theater”-like style.
While it looks like it will be a while before we get substantial reveals, the podcast is worth listening to if you are interested in the vision behind Ghost.
