Hunting plays a big role in the life of a Frontiersmen. Here we lay down the general ideas behind the mechanic...
So hunting is a pretty big part of the game, and I wanted to talk about how it works and some of the design decisions I made.
The biggest challenge with hunting in an isometric game is that you can’t see very far. In first-person games, you can spot animals from a distance, but with our camera angle, they’d basically be right next to you before you see them.
The solution? Make sound the main way you find animals.
When you’re exploring, you’ll hear animal calls. In this clip, you can hear a Rocky Mountain Elk. When an animal calls, it shows up on your compass bar with a direction indicator. This gives you a general heading to follow without needing to see the animal from far away.
Once you’re heading in the right direction, you’ll start finding tracks on the ground. These glowing tracks tell you what animal it is and which way it went. Just follow them until you get close enough for a shot.
After you take down an animal, you can skin it. The quality of your harvest depends on your shot score - basically how clean the kill was. The less the animal suffered, the better the loot.
Shot score is affected by:
A perfect shot means you get a perfect pelt, more meat, better antlers/horns (depending on the animal), and higher quality materials overall. These can be sold for more money or used for crafting.
In the video, I got a clean heart shot that dropped a Red Deer instantly, so the score maxed out and I got the best possible loot from it.
That’s the hunting system in a nutshell. It’s still being refined, but the core loop of hearing → tracking → shooting → harvesting feels pretty good so far.
I’ve seen some media coverage describing Little Frontier as primarily a hunting game. Just want to clear that up - it’s not. Hunting is just one part of the game, one activity among many.
The game is heavily story-based, but I’ll save that for another devlog :)
We hit a huge milestone recently - 1000 wishlists in the first 24 hours after launch! Thank you so much to everyone who added the game to their wishlist. Really means a lot and pushes me to work even harder !
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