A new species that wanders over when you take a break

The title is a bit of an exaggeration, but basically: I built a feature where creatures come up to you while you’re resting, and since I didn’t yet have a creature that really fit the role of “the one that comes up to you,” I ended up designing a new one.

As I mentioned last time, I want resting to be more than just resting. I’d like it to have some kind of play built into it. One idea that came out of that was a gimmick where creatures approach you and restore your health.

I think this holds true for real animals too: if a person is tense, or tries to approach them, animals will run away. But if you relax, show that you mean no harm, and just wait to see how they react, sometimes they’ll come to you on their own. That’s what I based this on.

Once I actually built it, it turned out way cuter and more soothing than I expected, so I’m planning to make it an official feature.

I also feel like the “pet” action is something you should be able to do with the titan as well, so that’s something I’ll be looking into going forward.

That reminded me: horses and dogs show up in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but could you pet them…? I looked it up, and apparently they left out petting because it didn’t fit the game’s design philosophy.

The Zelda series probably focuses on things like combining systems to create emergent play, and on combat, so maybe they didn’t want to add a feature that had nothing to do with that, or that might even get in the way.

In this game, the core focus is interacting with a living mountain, so I think a petting feature will probably make it more fun.

And here’s the new creature that comes up to you:

In the game I’m currently using placeholder materials, but I’ll be polishing its look to match the sketch.

It doesn’t have a name yet. As you can probably tell from how it moves, it’s based on small birds like sparrows. That said, while its basic shape is close to a sparrow, its flying form is going to be a little different.

That’s because I’m imagining that this world has a lineage of creatures that evolved from shellfish. Grilim, Mootra, and actually Kirk too, all belong to it, and this new species is part of that family as well.

Its head and body are made of shell, and its legs are made of the shellfish’s flesh.

This idea of creatures that evolved from shellfish is an homage to a setting from one of my favorite works.

I’ll talk about where it comes from in the next DevLog, but in the meantime, try guessing which work it is! (It’s pretty well known, so some of you will probably get it right away…)