The Camp Becomes a Town · Anduin Games

This morning's post ended with a meadow the survivors turn into a golf course. This one is about what the island looks like after they have been there a while.

Four places that grow up

The beach, the forest trail, the camp and the grounds are the same four places, later. The change is a saved milestone rather than a new map you travel to: once the community has taken root, those four zones switch over. Anything you built on the old ones stays where it was.

The beach goes to work. There are racks of drying fish along the rope fence, fishing stations with rods that move, crates stacked under the canopies, and people carrying cargo up from the water all day.

The beach in the later stage: racks of drying fish and stacked crates along a rope fence, netting under a canopy, and people carrying boxes up from the water. — The same beach, working for a living.

The forest path between the beach and the town is strung with bulbs and bunting, and somebody is up a ladder putting up more of it while you walk past.

The trail between the town and the beach, strung with lit bulbs and bunting, a resident up a ladder hanging more, and walkers on the path. — The trail, lit for a festival.

And the camp is a town: timber and thatch instead of tarpaulins, a workshop with a hammer on its sign, a clinic, a kitchen, stalls of fruit and vegetables, a queue at one of them. The shopkeepers will talk to you. To be clear about what that is and is not — they have things to say, not things to sell. There is no trading system behind those counters yet.

A real first hole

The grounds change too. The meadow you were laying out holes in this morning now has an authored Hole 1 in it: a tee with a hanging board and a 1 painted on it, rough, bunkers, and a green cut into the grass at the far end.

A shot from the grass of the homemade hole: the golfer at address with the aim line ahead of the ball, and a readout giving the hole, the club, the power, the strokes played and the lie. — Wood, half power, out of the rough.

It plays the way the island's golf has played since this morning: in the world, on the same coordinates you walk around on, with no separate course screen. Wood, iron or putter, aim and power, the ball flies and rolls and slows down in the rough, and the cup is the cup.

The first green, ringed by bunkers and jungle: the golfer standing over the ball beside an ivory flag, with a readout reading Hole 1, Putter, 2 strokes, Holed. — Two on the first, on a green they cut themselves.

Your own designed holes are still saved and still playable. This one sits beside them rather than over them. Round scores are not kept yet.

Somewhere to stop

Above the town there are hot springs, which is the first thing on the island that is not work. Three warm basins stepped into the rock, a cold waterfall and a lake beside them, a sauna and changing huts put together out of salvaged timber, loungers under a shade sail, and a tea counter.

The hot springs: warm pools stepped into the rock with waterfalls between them, bathers up to their shoulders in the water, and the golfer in the nearest pool. — Warm water, and the cold fall behind it.

You can get in the water, sit in the sauna or take a lounger, and about a dozen other people are already doing all three. There is no reward for it. Nothing improves, no stat moves; the game just remembers you went. That seems right for a hot spring.

The sauna: a small salvaged-timber cabin with an open front, a stove with its flue through the roof, and three people sitting along the bench inside, the golfer among them. — The sauna, built out of what came off the ship.

What is not there

The springs are reached from the town by a temporary path, because the neighbourhood that is meant to sit between them has not been built. The food district, the housing, the farm and the forestry are drawings, not places. The lookout west of the springs is scenery. Your friends do not follow you into the water yet.

It is all on the golf project page now, under the island. Still in development, still no release date.