Woven is a third-person adventure game about a stuffed animal named Stuffy and his flying mechanical sidekick, Glitch. Together, they set off to explore a soft, sewn and knitted fantasy world filled with other stuffed creatures, solving puzzles, discovering secrets, and searching for bits of colorful fabric. It seems like a perfectly charming place, but that's not entirely the case.
Stuffy begins life as an elephant, but he can be changed, partly or entirely, into other animals, with each aspect conferring unique abilities. Elephant legs allow him to stamp on the ground, for instance, while rabbit legs let him jump high in the air; the rabbit's eyes improve his sight, but his elephant trunk enables him to pick things up. Different challenges require different abilities, and thus different body parts, which can be swapped (once found) by way of large sewing machines spread throughout the land.
Developers Alterego Games and Digital Forest are seeking €85,000 [$95,600] on Kickstarter, which they said is their only funding option: The project will be “shelved” if the campaign fails. “We have funded Woven ourselves until this time and our budget can only develop the game so far,” the Kickstarter pitch says. “To put it simply, we need more funding to complete the game. Publishers are handing out budgets less and less and when they do, it often comes at the cost of creative freedom.”
A free demo of Woven is available now, and I think it shows quite a bit of potential. The controls aren't great but the studio said more and better options are being worked on, and the demo as a whole is representative of “the ambiance, feel, music style, and gameplay” that will be in the final release. “Also included will be more puzzles with increasing difficulty and complexity, more characters and more content,” a rep said. “The demo will act as the tutorial, and will gently lead the player into the game–before it starts to get…darker.”
Without spoiling anything, I can attest to a rather sudden shift in tone at the end of the demo. It's not a move into Dark Descent territory (unless things go really sideways later on), but it does promise interesting things to come. The Woven Kickstarter is live now and runs until October 7.
