Gata Guressi
A downloadable game for Windows
2024
• DESCRIPTION •
Gata Guressi is a sci-fi RPG tech demo about the various planets and cultures of Hierre, a fictional star system. You are Quuvol, a merchant who has travelled to trade port Kallay Tirridor on the planet of Voenn to sell your valuable shipment of a resource called ielsek.
Quuvol is Guressi (native of the planet Guressen). Guressen's former government practised slavery, turning the rest of the system against Guressen and spreading the idea that all Guressi are slavers. Guressen's new leader Iusol has outlawed slavery, but the system is still skeptical of Guressi.
Characters speak one or more of 10 languages. Languages aren't just random words - you can actually learn them and play without the translator if you wish.
Gata Guressi is set in the Hierre system alongside Sandboard, EM, Regin's Grip, and the Hierre card game. See the Hierre system doc for more.
• RECEPTION •
Gata Guressi earned an 1st mark for its random character creation, dialogue system, and cutscenes.
• DEVELOPMENT •
This was a 3rd year university project developed in Unity. I aimed to develop a cohesive, immersive, optimized experience that simulated a slice of a larger sci-fi RPG (like Regin's Grip). A few of the games inspirations include Prey's Talos I, Cyberpunk 2077's Heavy Hearts Club, Star Wars' Cantina, No Man's Sky spaceships, and rotation sushi restaurants.
I wrote fictional languages and heavily built on the Hierre universe for this project. Each planet/region has an icon, culture, aesthetic identity, and language which you can learn about by speaking to its inhabitants and inspecting cultural objects like banners, statues, etc.
Each language has conventions and an auditory identity to build cohesion. Lunsca is nearly impossible for non-native speakers to understand. Sorpri uses long, flowery words and names instead of pronouns. Hiesca uses consistent prefixes, suffixes, and sounds to build its identity (e.g. the sound “ie”, two-syllable words, locations of importance ending with -enne, -erre, or -ette).
If you're interested, you can find all up-to-date information about the Hierre system in this document, including info about languages, history, culture, and basically any other concrete detail about Hierre.
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Comments
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Really nice!
I really liked the setting and people from different planets having a consistent sense of culture, and love how there are some words that mean similar but slightly different things based on context. I saw the Guressca word 'bala' come up a few times, translated different ways but generally used for brushing someone off - these sort of words appear often in language but it's not something I actively notice day-to-day speaking to people. Seeing it here feels pretty immersive.
I really like the setting too. It feels like walking into an alien-version Macau casino bar, with the vaguely east-asian aesthetics taken to a glossy extreme. You do get the feeling that a lot of shady money moves through this place. Really distinctive.
OST is minimal but hits right. It's always a special feeling in these games when the music fades in when the world seems to open up.
Great stuff. I'm looking forward to what you make next.
Thank you! Good eye with the language details, they can be easy to miss
I wish you so much success with where you're going with this. I've watched a little bit of the playthrough and from the looks of it, it could use a lot more polish. A lot of things look static or don't have enough sounds. I know you're just in the development phase, wish you luck still.
Thank you for checking it out! Yeah it could definitely use more audio