Tunnels from Nowhere

Tunnels from Nowhere, also known simply as Tunnel Game, is an ongoing video game project by Kjolt. It is a first-person adventure game focused on exploration, interaction and combat. It is being made in an updated version of the same engine used to make Rodney's Tunnel, and serves as both a successor and indirect sequel to it and the Ricky War continuity.

Due to an inherent lack of focus while balancing other things, this game does not have any sort of planned release time or any other deadlines.

Gameplay

Although it has yet to be tangibly structured, it plans to follow a comparable formula to Rodney's Tunnel and the game it's based on. It is a simple first person game with limited 3D where you can only control your player horizontally. Unlike Rodney's Tunnel, when the player dies, they will instead get to retry from the last save instead of starting a new game.

Items can be put into the belt slots to be used, and extra items can be strategically laid inside the rest of the inventory. A compass in the top-right of the UI directs you to the next ladder going down, if one is present. After gaining sufficient XP, you get 5 points to spend on upgrading 5 different stats; your strength, defense, speed, intelligence (mana) and vitality (HP).

Tunnels from Nowhere has many floors in which the player must fight against enemies and find items. However, rather than just going through one linear series of floors, there will be surface floors that serve as a hub. From there, tunnels can be entered through entrances with less of a strict progression. This aspect is inspired by Pikmin 2, which prominently features caves that can be discovered from the surface and serve as self-contained linear challenges. Each tunnel may vary in its length, difficulty and features. Bosses appear in certain ones and must be defeated to progress into locked areas. There is procedural generation for some places, though the game is not to be as reliant on it as its predecessors, having many more intentionally-designed areas.

Story

As a southern Canadian citizen based near Ricky Hills, following the events of Kevin War by many years, your player character grows bored of the monotony of modern life. To seek thrills, you venture out to look for interesting things outside. You discover ominous tunnels which are far from how they seem at first; rather than being purely dark, quiet and abandoned, they have become home to a sort of impossibly fantastical world beneath the Earth.

Friendly characters provide information about the nature of the game and its world, and you must fend off vicious monsters and mercenaries in order to confront powerful leaders within the tunnels. They serve to protect their tunnels from invaders, often due to fear of their power being cut off or out of disgust for mundane humans. This power is derived from the evildoing of [REDACTED], a deranged wizard working to transform reality to his whim by harvesting human souls for their power.

These souls are contained in devices that allow their human thoughts to manifest as what lies within the tunnels, fabricated by their mutual yearning for a more interesting and fun world. By descending further into the darkness and killing [REDACTED], the development of these soul-harnessing machines may be halted and the tunnels remain intact. If [REDACTED] is not stopped, they would reach their fullest potential and eventually tear apart the very fabric of existence.