About Heartlands
Heartlands is an open world survival role playing journey through comparative mythology and existentialism where players will face the vice of mortality as they fight to ensure the survival of their bloodline in a world filled with
magic, cross realm curiosities and impending doom.
​Players will be thrown into a world that has just survived a purge of humanity by corrupted gods that had since been banished to the shadow realms, a feat so powerful that it reshaped the the continents,
wiping out most life and altering some of which remained as well as shattering the bridges between realms, cutting off the physical realm from the age old protectors in the ethereal realms, leaving humanity to face off alone against the fierce evil that remains trapped with them.
It is only a matter of time before the corrupted ones conjures enough magic to reopen a bridge to the physical realm and finish what they started.
The only way to ensure humanity's survival is for you to rediscover the old ways lost to hubris and repair the bridges between realms and eventually take the fight to the shadow realms side by side with
your ancestors and pantheon.
​Players will explore vast lands, other worlds and planes of existence as they invent, discover and fight against odds with sometimes catastrophic consequences but death is not the end. With their chosen belief system players will venture through death itself in
search of the realm eternal from where they can be summoned for guidance or assistance by later generations.
Heartlands is an evolving project and currently still in the early stages of development. For updates please visit the Devlog where I will post major development updates. Below is a list of some of the features that Heartlands will have,
for a more comprehensive list check out the Roadmap.
Features
Bloodlines
Players will be able to have children and take control of other members of their bloodline. Knowledge will be passed on and skills will continue to progress through generations. The longer your line survives the stronger your people will become and the more likely it will survive an onslaught from the shadow realm.
Evolving Belief System
Players will have the option to establish a belief system and pantheon that will evolve over time as members of your line pass on and make it to the realm eternal. The pantheon decisions can bestow favor on your people, endowing them with great powers or simply a good harvest. The chosen belief system will also allow players to have outer body experiences and venture through their chosen afterlife experience as they journey to the realm eternal.
Realm System
Explore both the physical and the metaphysical through the many means of magic and alchemy to uncover arcane secrets and solve mysteries that can bestow knowledge and power on your line beyond your wildest dreams.
Comparative Mythological Lore
Creatures from all walks of mythology and history make up an ecosystem that responds to the player's actions, possibly wiping out a species or sometimes even bestowing sentience on them.
Item Component and Profession System
The component system allows players to craft parts and modifications for items and structures alongside the profession system that will make them more proficient in crafting said items so that they will be truly unique. That family heirloom sword your great grandfather used to slay the last dragon will most likely be one of a kind.
Settlement managment
Players can choose to have random AI citizens populate their towns over time and eventually create a thriving society that will help them keep the balance between realms.
Progressive agriculture
Animals and plants maintained by players will evolve through generations based on their environment, nutrients and training, allowing players to breed animals and crops selectively.
Huge open world
Heartlands will have a large main map that will evolve over the development journey to have several continents for you and friends to sail to or visit through the many means of magic, not to mention other worlds with their own unique inhabitants and other planes of existence to explore. Long term plans include random world generation for a truly unique experience.
Team
Currently the team consists of only myself but I will be looking to hire more people to help me on this project as soon as finances allow it.
So about me; my name is Gareth and I am a senior full stack software developer with about 5 years experience in game development.
I have always been fascinated by game development and the medium it provides for creating experiences.
In school I would often spend my spare time making small games I could play on pen and paper with their own mechanics that I would tinker with.
Yes I was that weird kid in the corner that was always sketching or planning something :P.
As I am writing this I glanced over to the knee high stack of books and files in which I collected all of these games, mechanics, stories and sketches in over the past two decades;
little did I know how well they would serve me later in life for this project.
I guess it goes without saying that I have always been a massive fan of the elder scrolls games,
that along with influences from the likes of J.R.R Tolkien, Robert Jordan and Terry Pratchett to name a few that have each had a hand in shaping the vision of Heartlands for me.
In 2021 I had an opportunity to take a leap of faith and quit my job to pursue this project full time.
It was a bit of a risky move but still a no brainer for me.
Heartlands is a project that is very dear to me as it is a collection of concepts and ideas I have brought along with me and kept alive from a time when I still possessed a child's wonder.
The opportunity to breath life in to that and share it with others is priceless to me.
However the bills are not priceless, especially not for an ambitious development project so I took some time to put together a crowd funding/hype trailer to try and make some noise around it and here we are!
Heartlands is the first on my list of many projects and my hopes are to have it create a foundation that allows me to pursue my other projects after its official launch.
On a side note for the trailer, cinematic animation is not my strongest point as I am sure many will notice but I did the best I could with the time and resources I had. It was meant to be a bit vague at points to create curiosity
as some of the concepts stretch quite wide. As the project progresses more specific content trailers will be released.
Join the journey
If you are interesting in learning more about the project and/or becoming part of the journey then check out the Heartlands discord server
Contact
If you would like to contact me you can do so on the Heartlands Discord server. Unfortunately I am only one person at the moment and can not respond to everyone but once the team grows more channels will open up!