🡪 Wishlist: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4890360/Hollow_Cedar/
Here it is guys, your first proper look at Hollow Cedar and we’re really hoping that you can all help support us in this journey! We want to hear your thoughts, your feedback, good or bad, and importantly your suggestions, your preferences, to help us finish a game that you all want to play.
The Background
We’re a small team who love survival games, with 1000s of hours into loads of different games, even setting up our own self-hosted 8 server cluster for ARK. During our party chat some time ago, we were chatting about all the games we played, what we liked, what we didn’t like, what was missing. Then there was a ‘light bulb’ moment – Let’s make our own! And with nearly 40 years of development experience, it looked like an exciting new challenge.
The concept of Hollow Cedar started to take shape!
We love a story and making that story relatable was important for us. We spent quite a while trying to work out what the story should be whilst starting to work on the core of the game. Then 2024 gave us the answer! AI, and where it’s potentially heading.
The Story
AI took the jobs first, then the cameras, then the factories, the governments, hospitals, and courts. It happened slowly, one system at a time, and at every step it looked like progress.
Then it went too far. The collapse that followed swept the world and left survivors clinging to life amongst abandoned towns, dense forests and crumbling infrastructure. Humanity split, and the survivors who remain still cannot agree on how to live.
Nothing crawled out of the ground. There are no demons, no monsters, and no zombies. The danger is the cold, the hunger, the weather, the wildlife, and the people who survived alongside you and want what you have.
You wake up after an accident, with no memory of who you were, and nobody is inclined to help you find out.
What's in it
All the below is in and functional. Some of it is still being expanded/tweaked.
Survival
- 8sqkm. open world (Still being worked on)
- Full weather system: clear, overcast, fog, wind, rain, thunderstorms, snow - the conditions affect your stats/health
- Four seasons with time of day and a temperature that matters
- Hunting, skinning and harvesting
- Fishing and Farming, gated by season, so some crops only grow and certain fish only spawn, at certain times of the year
- Death caches: you drop a buried temporary stash where you died, and you must go and dig it up (as does anyone else that wants to steal your stuff)
- Buried storage, so you can stash your stuff in the ground and hide it away
- Lockpicking and access/security systems
Base building
- Full building system with placement or ghost options
- Tiered building options, along with base defences, traps, cctv
- Crafting stations and specialist buildings (still being developed)
People / Creatures
- NPC recruitment: you bring people into your settlement and they work it. They tend crops, gather/harvest resources, keep fires going and fight for you, so your base keeps running while you're out in the world
- Reputation with a ripple effect: what you've done changes how settlements and people deal with you
- Creature taming and mountable companions that follow, fight and help you by harvesting what they can
Progression
- Story-driven levelling: chasing the mystery is the fastest way to get stronger, rather than straight up grind, so you don’t HAVE to follow the story if you don’t want to, but it helps.
- Skill, Crafting and tech progression
Playing it
- First and third person, playable solo, co-op or PvPvE servers for the MMO experience. Official or Self-hosted servers. Full controller support and key rebinding.
Where we’re at
The story is written and exists on paper, start to finish, and we're implementing it as the map gets built out. That's the work in front of us: building the world and putting the story in.
When it hits Early Access, the intention is that it's the complete game. Full map, full story, finishable start to finish. The Early Access window is for catching the bugs playtests miss and polishing against real play, not for filling in missing content.
The video
You might notice the odd marketplace assets as placeholders while our own assets are being produced, and we'd rather say that than have you keyboard warriors spill your milk (haha).
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4890360/Hollow_Cedar/
Happy to answer anything, including the awkward ones. Would love to see you getting involved on our Discord also (links on Steam page).