Prologue

• The game begins in the farming district, a humble town that is responsible with most of the food harvesting in the trees. They live in small, simple houses and have crops growing atop branches.
  • This town used to worship the spirit of harvest, as their area is the most fertile of the areas
  • The player can find an abandoned shrine for the spirit
  • The food is transported to the capital via troops that come once a week to collect. They have DaVinci style wings that allow them to fly
  • In old times, people would ride on the birds to travel long distances, but now they don't know how to tame the birds anymore
• The player wakes up and goes outside for a normal day of farming, and run into your Grandpa (?)
• In the middle of him telling you your duties for the day, you are interrupted by soldiers coming to collect the crops
  • Because the tree is weakened, it is no longer providing plentiful crops
  • The troops men are rude, and complain about the bad harvest, saying the Guild will not like that, almost implying there might be punishment
  • What are you harvesting? Come up with interesting crops perhaps. How would one farm on top of trees?
  • How does the technology impact farming? Are they given tools to make farming easier, or are they left to their own devices?
  • Maybe you can have an NPC farmer complain about how they wish they would use the tech to make their jobs easier instead of just giving it to the troops
• The troops take what they need and fly away
• Grandpa - trying to shake off concern - turns back to player and says you must go check on the crops. He says to take a farming tool that can work as a weapon to protect yourself, as the forest creatures have gotten more aggressive lately
• Player then walks through farming town, interacting with side NPCs on their way to the crops
• Have a newspaper man/town crier sharing the news of the new government building that was revealed the passing week
• Mentioned in passing via NPC conversation, no one even noticed how not okay it is to carve the trees guts out to place the government in it
• There are signs across the town that point the player towards the crops --> no objective icon
• Once the player reaches the crops, they'll see two enemies hovering over it trying to eat it (large beetles)
  • This scene acts as a combat tutorial session
• Once the player successfully wards off the bugs, there is a sudden strong tremor --> the tree is collapsing
• The player runs off of the tree in a tense moment of traversing the falling tree
  • Around player, villagers scream and fall off the tree
  • Have one of the NPCs the player interacted with fall off the tree, the player seeing it and not being able to do anything about it (intentional lack of agency to contrast the agency of the player by late game, at this point they are too unskilled to do anything "heroic")
• As the tree comes down, it also takes a part of the village along with it --> maybe even some NPCs they met on the way to the crops
• TITLE CARD

Act 1

• Your grandpa approaches and asks if you're okay, and the camera pans to the destroyed tree and village
• NPCs are gathered looking at the destruction
• He says you must take the responsibility to deliver this news to the capital, as they cant wait until the soldier come again for help, and other need to tend to their families
• On their way out of town, the player talks to some NPCs that somberly talking about their lost loved ones
• The usual path to the capital has been blocked by the fallen tree, so player will have to take the long way, stopping by the Water Village before making their way over the the capital
• And so, the player embarks into their first biome

Biome 1

• This biome is lush, with sunbeams peeking through the canopy, ferns, vines, moss, and alien flowers growing all around --> some being dangerous
• Not too far from town, the player can find an abandoned shrine for the spirit of harvest. Here, you can find a mural that gives some insight into the myths and history of the forest. Player can also save and recover health here
  • Every biome had one big shrine with statue or other form of imagery of its respective patron spirit, and a mural depicting a myth attached to the spirit
  • Along that, there are also small shrines with much smaller depictions of the spirits that act simply as save areas rather than environmental storytelling
  • The game will also auto-save at town entrances and when player enters town buildings
• In this biome, the player will be fighting bug enemies
  • also maybe lizards? figure out other enemy types
• It is also here that they will find and fight their first corrupted boss that has the forest spirit trapped inside
• After defeating it, the forest spirit is released, the player can see it coming out of the bosses body, the spirit now free and the creature cleansed
• Be also see flowers bloom of the ground, where your first forest-given ability is picked up --> dash
  • maybe dont give first ability here, have player fight the boss ability-less
  • Actually lets not make the first boss a spirit, come back to this later
• The player explores the biome further, now bring able to unlock certain areas they couldn't previously
• After defeating spirit boss, player is able to make their way to the Water Village

Water Village

• This Village has waterfalls pouring down the trees, forming lakes. The architecture is much more advanced, and is much bigger than the Farming Town.
• They used to worship the spirit of water, which has a lot of connection with knowledge. They worked with nature to understand it better, finding medical properties and how to be more efficient while maintaining balance. They would send their medicine men to other areas to share knowledge and provide care for those in other districts that needed it
• In present day, they are an alchemist and fishing, with a focus on exports and using natural properties for profit
• It is likely that some players will just try to immediatly find a way out of town to go straight to the capital
• To avoid that, add an ability gate --> as gap wall is too high to make it
  • This will encourage players to look around to find a solution
• They head to the Alchemy Building to talk to the city leader
• She is scared but immediately sends a team to research
• She also mentions that there used to be a bridge there but it got destroyed by creatures, and the guilt still hasnt sent people to fix it, so they can't help the player with figuring out how to progress
• However, the player can find a small community of those who still practice medicinal work, which is discouraged by the guild
  • Maybe they can act as a "shop" to upgrade healing abilities
• Player meets an the elder and leader of said community, and he says that maybe you'll be able to climb the wall if you can connect with the forest, and points the player towards the water biome, that is fairly hidden for the player
  • He gives player a landmark to follow
  • Why does he think going that way will lead to unlocking the ability?
  • What is in this biome
    • Wall climb ability
• The player then heads to the water biome

Biome 2

• The theme then becomes how you must tend to something to have it thrive, and the government is evil → heal by taking care of your community

  • If so, maybe add that they had to remove people from their houses to make space for the new gov buildings

• Towns aren't as connected anymore because the superhuman mobility was given by the forest spirits → they are disconnected so now they can't move easily anymore

• Your mobility abilities are unlocked through the tree magic

• When you find one of the few spiritual leaders, he will tell you that in the old times everyone had the abilities you will unlock → give them fun names

  • He will also say that he managed to learn a bit but was maybe discouraged by the government maybe?

• At some point, you will fall off and discover what's at the bottom → a fungal swamp that is rotting and corrupting the forest

• Bosses are corrupted forest spirits/beasts

• Forest could catch on fire eventually → magical fire → maybe as the story goes on the forest can become more perilous and have events like that

• Gov leader can fully be in denial, saying that they don't need to worry about the trees, and that they've progressed past them → maybe he can go mad be the one to throw you off the tree (maybe it could be the first version of a boss fight kinda like Godrick in elden ring)

• We can establish that towns are safe locations you can talk to NPCs and rest, and then break that pattern by having one town turn on you (boss fight)