In the early days, when development was mostly just sitting around talking and making paper prototypes, we were of course imagining a very different game.

The first few months, Not Us had the workname "Potion House" and was about making potions to chase away ghosts. There were different phases, like "making the potions", "looking for ghosts" and as an afterthought: "gathering ingredients for the potions".

Long story short: that afterthought turned into the main game. We figured that the levels of the game could take the form of stopping points on a journey the player character was on. And by doing so, we could bake in exciting sounding stuff — danger, adventure, travel, cool looking plants, and so on.

However, the vertical slice was a very heavy lift. For what feels like forever, no playable levels were actually made — but guess what: we have now finally begun work on new levels!

We will be previewing some of the levels here in the devlog, but first let's look at the structure of a Not Us level:

• Game mechanics: local magic effects, or "mutations" of the standard game rules, to spice things up.

• Environment: features, flora, fauna, kind of obstacles to overcome. None of these really affects game mechanics, but are part of the overall story and worldbuilding.

• Unique ally cards: each level comes with its own type of possible animal friends (a.k.a. the Ally cards).

• Card recipes to unlock: new Powerful Potions (the cards with gray background that you get to choose from now and then during the game). They will need crafting before you get to use them in the card game.

•  Dialogue between characters: as the player progresses from level to level, more information is revealed about the world and the story of Twig, Lizard and Goat.

(Generally speaking, only the first three points will be covered in devlogs such as this one.)

Now, let's dive in the "River Level"!

Game mechanics

Environment

Ally cards

That's what we had for you this time around. We hope you one day will play the full version of Not Us, and see with your own eyes how Twig, Lizard and Goat navigates the choppy waters of our River level!