Fur! - A Game about the Canadian Fur Trade

Fur! » Devlog

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Fur! Is my work-in-progress submission for Historically Accurate Game Jam 5. The theme for this jam is "your country's history" and right away I knew I wanted to make a management simulation game about the fur trade in Canada. Namely, the fierce competition between the Hudson's Bay Company and North West Company during the Pemmican War. My hope is to use this jam to develop a gameplay prototype that can be expanded in the coming months.

Chapter 1: Inspirations and Design

There Will Be Blood (Tone)

The biggest tonal inspiration for this game (and where it gets its namesake) is the movie There Will Be Blood. Specifically, I wanted to capture the incessant greed and opportunism that was present during the fur trade. This greed often came at a human expense that is still felt to this day. I want players to feel like Daniel Plainview and drink the milkshake of their competitors!

via GIPHY

I wanted to explore this human cost in Fur! however given the short time frame for the jam, I decided to use this jam to focus on gameplay and tone and then expand the game later to include narrative and put a human face on the depicted conflict.

Offworld Trading Simulator (Gameplay - Economy)

Offworld Trading Simulator served as the base template of how the player interacts with the in-game economy. In OTS , players have to respond to the laws of supply and demand in real time as they buy low and sell high. Players can flood the market with materials to drive prices down. As well, players buy shares of rival companies to swallow them up and put them out of the game. This mechanic is particularly interesting for the time period I want to depict in Fur! where the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company were at each others throats (literally).

Dicey Dungeons (Gameplay)

Dicey Dungeons served as the main inspiration for the how players would procure resources in Fur!. In Fur!, workers are represented by dice and are placed onto activity cards indicating what those workers will be used for. There is an element of strategy and also an element of randomness/luck inherent in using dice for this purpose. Dice give a sense of tactility and groundedness that will add a nice touch to Fur!.

via Gfycat

Inscryption (Game Feel)

Inscryption stands out for how well it makes its environments feel lived-in and real. Inscryption nails that tabletop feel that many card/board based games tend to abstract away. Every item and interaction has a weight and visceral feeling to it that immerses the player totally and completely. In Fur!, I want players to feel like they are actually sitting at a table managing the accounts of one of Canada's oldest companies. Inscryption sets a mood and I want Fur! to do the same.

Development Update (Jan. 2, 2022)

As of writing this, I am three days into the game jam but have only spent one day working in Unity. The first two days consisted of drawing sketches, diagrams, and planning out how I wanted my game to play. The hardest part of that process was nailing down exactly how I wanted the player to interact with the economy. Originally, I had the idea to make Fur! more like the Lemonade Stand Game, but as I jotted down ideas and researched the Pemmican War, it became clear that what I wanted was actually closer to Offworld Trading Simulator.

After getting an idea of the type of game I wanted to play, the first step was planning out how the economy would flow.

A rough idea of the core economy system. What flows in and how it flows out.

It was also important to sketch out the UI to understand exactly what affordances the player would have. The more work I do with paper/pencil, the less potential for mistakes to be made when development starts.