Devlog #2: Developing the story behind Syloria

When I first started building Syloria, most of my attention was on the core idea of turning things you do in real life into progression in a fantasy world. The more I worked on it though, the more I felt that simply earning XP and watching numbers increase wasn't enough. If Syloria was going to feel like an RPG, I wanted there to be a genuine reason for the player to keep exploring the world and to understand why their real-life actions matter within it.

That's where the story of The Shattering started to develop. Before the player arrives, something happened that fractured Syloria and disconnected parts of the realm. You begin your journey in Starlit Grove, where you meet Lumen, a strange companion who knows the world but can only remember pieces of what happened to it.

I've been developing the three disciplines around different parts of that story rather than having them exist purely as separate progression systems. Strength quests allow your workouts to have an immediate effect on the world around you, while reading through Wisdom can uncover fragments of forgotten knowledge. Adventure does something similar with walking and exploring, gradually revealing memories of places and paths that once connected the realm.

Eventually, progression leads to three larger areas called Frontiers: Stonewild Bastion, the Dawn Archive and Stormtrail Crossing. I've spent quite a bit of time recently developing the story that runs through these areas. Rather than each Frontier being a standalone location, discoveries made in one begin to change how you understand the others, particularly as Lumen starts remembering more about the world he is helping you restore.

The mystery at the centre of it has also changed quite a lot during development. The question is no longer simply “What happened to Syloria?” As the player uncovers more of its history, a much more important question starts to emerge: what if Syloria wasn't shattered by accident? That's the direction I'm most excited about now. I don't want the story to feel like something happening separately from the self-improvement side of the game. Ideally, when you finish a workout and complete a quest, go for a walk and discover something new, or read and recover another fragment of the past, it should feel like your own progress is genuinely moving the story forward.

There's still plenty of Syloria's history that I'm keeping hidden for now, especially when it comes to Lumen and what happened before the player arrived. That's probably been one of my favourite parts of building the game so far.

Your real life is the adventure. 🌙