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Squize

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Owlmen

Posted by Squize - January 4th, 2012


Someone asked me about the story in Outpost:Haven, and I thought it would make sense to write it up here properly.

The core idea behind the story was the thought of "Collective consciousness". The basic story itself is straight forward, and cliched enough, some alien eggs / artefacts are found when mining on the asteroid and brought aboard Haven.
What I wanted to add was the idea that the presence of these items would affect everyone on board.

The whole Owlmen thing is inspired by "Communion" by Whitley Strieber. In that book he wrote about an alien abduction experience, and how he only started to remember when he saw a toy owl, its eyes reminded him of the aliens eyes and it started coming back to him.
In Outpost the concept is that because these aliens are just so alien, that until you actually see them you just can't wrap your head around them, so they're pictured as "Owl men" instead by everyone. It's the closest representation the people onboard can make.

I felt that in a large crew there would be clear divides. The less spiritual would take to arms, the more open would see the owlmen dreams as a sign, and a "Cult" would form in preparation for the "Enlightenment". Again this is based on UFO lore, where there's the mechanical grey type aliens that perform abductions, and the more hippy like "Space brothers" who come to save us.

The whole "Ule" thing was to show that everyone was doomed right from the very start, all of them were infected by madness ( It's our version of "All work and no play..." from The Shining ). I liked the idea that no one even realised they were even writing it, they were all going insane and didn't even know it.
By the way, "Ule" is old English for "Owl".

And I think that's enough otherwise I'll be spewing out spoilers for the 2nd game.


Comments

Oh I get it now.

You did fine work the game though, I really liked the general tone of everything.

Though I still don't get why I can by keys for Swarm mode, and waste my money.

And the fact that if shooting a door open gives +30 Exp and can be done with the pistol with infinite ammo, and keys only give +10 Exp for opening them, then there's no real benefit for actual ever using a key D:

<3

Oops, I was meant to turn off key buying for Swarm mode, that was a mistake, sorry.

I honestly didn't think anyone would shoot open a door with the pistol unless they were out of keys, I tried to make the doors "strong" enough so that would be a painful last option. Guess I was wrong :)

Thanks for the reply mate.

Well this was a great in-depth explanation of the storyline, I understood most of it before you posted this. I was actually wondering what that 'Ule' thing was, thank you for clarifying that.

Glad you're going to make a 2nd game for this. I can't wait to see what it will bring. I did a very thorough review of Outpost:Haven if you ever need a deep outlook on what people thought of it and what to add in to the second one.

A true honor to have played such a Glorious game! Im still on the final level though, that level just gives me the creeps.

Thank you so much mate, both for posting here and the review ( I did try and pm you about the review, but I think you block them ? )

No one seems to have commented on the name "Strix" yet, that was quite an obvious one.

Again, I'm glad you enjoyed it, we loved making it and we're buzzing for the 2nd one.

Ok yea I was wondering what "owlmen" was supposed to be.

Pretty goofy considering the aliens are clearly giant orange spiders, and not owls. They're pretty easy to describe in this scenario.

Ah but people were seeing them in their dreams first, and that's usually symbolic ( Whenever I'm stressed about money I have dreams about spiders for some reason ).

I wanted something a little bit deeper than it just being a "Bug hunt".

Thanks for posting man.

That game scared me but in a good way :)

Cool :)

I also wanted to know who that strix guy was? Wasn't he one of the people who were fighting the owlmen? Why did he turn into that thing? I'm so confused DX. Awesome game btw, can't wait for the next one.

Sorry about the late reply mate, I don't get any notifications about comments on here.

Strix was the controller of Outpost:Haven. He wanted to experiment with the Aliens with a view to making them a weapon ( Cliche I know ), which involved DNA splicing as during the testing it transpired that the aliens were too wild and basically dumb to control.
The idea was if they could take the advantages of the aliens, strong, heavily armoured etc. and apply that to a man who could control that properly, they'd be able to churn out an army which could then be sold onto the military.
Strix being power mad and also affected by the dreams which drove everyone else insane, decided that he should be the prototype hybrid, and as you see on the last level, it doesn't quite go as planned.

Glad you liked it mate, and I hope that explains some of it.

666

can,t wait tell the next one this is the only flash game that made me jump hope the next one you can walk faster

wish this was something I could play on my Playstation 3, cause I love this game, this and DN8 are freaking addictive as hell to play

you at 100