Vasilisa, holding the egg containing the Death of the Koschei the Deathless

Koschei the Deathless

Vasilisa & Koschei

Basic Gameplay Overview: Detailed description: -The game opens with Vasilisa, a young girl, on a screen depicting her razed village. Vasilisa has the option to go right, pull a dagger (from a stone? from the back of her father?), and kill Koschei, or to retreat to the left, hop on a ship and sail away.
-If the player elects to kill Koschei, he doesn't fight back. However, striking him down doesn't work, he laughs it off, and ultimately the player's only choice is to back back and explore.
-Taking ship to island of Buyan affords opportunity to destroy three containers of Koschei's soul/death so that this doesn't happen.

-4 levels - learn one spell at start of each of first three levels, one prefix during each level
-Levels correspond to nested containers of Koschei's Death/Soul: chest, hare, duck, egg (maybe these could be Matryoshka-style totems?)

-level 1 -traverse island to Buyan tree [chest is in base of tree - when opened, hare escapes leaping up tree]
-level 2 -climb tree to follow hare that escapes chest [hare is at end of distant branch - when opened, duck drops out into pond below, floats/swims away]
-level 3 -traverse pond to find duck
-level 4 -underground/underworld/cave(?) to find egg

There are 3 spells, given by Volos, the Slavic nature-god, which allow control over plantlife and wooden objects in environment. The spells are selected by mouse, and used by clicking on the on-screen objects in the level to cast the spell on.
The three spells:
расти-cause plants or wooden blocks to grow vertically (raise platforms to reach new areas)
метаморфоз-transmute wood to metal (make blocks sink; break through weak floors; weigh more to pull pulleys or tilt scales in physics puzzles)
сгорат-destroy small wooden blocks (open areas)

Vasilisa also learns 3 prefixes, which can augment the spells:
Грозный- - increase spell effect (density of metal, height of growth, destroy larger blocks)
не- - reverse spell effect [shrink grown plants, create blocks, turn metal block to wood (so it floats, etc.)]
Минога- - select multiple blocks to change at once (for puzzles where timing is important, you can select multiple tiles to, say, destroy all at once, or multiple wooden blocks to simultaneously turn to metal)

-Ending - can kill Koschei, or insert the pin from his egg into him, returning his soul/death to him, and rendering him mortal. (maybe hero is Marya Morevna, warrior princess who captured Koschei?)

Keep things brief - let people 'discover' uses for spells and different prefix combinations, but we don't need the game to be so long these tasks become rote or repetitive!

Visual Style

I'm thinking a 16-bit pixelated style will allow us the color-depth and resolution to articulate the painterly strength of our source materials, and talents of our artists, while exerting enough of a restricting aesthetic force that all of our disparate styles come together consistently.


In addition to the Bilibin and Vasnetsov dicussed in the threads, here are some aesthetic influences which were floating around in my head as I was imagining this:
For Koschei, Cossack-inspired images of him from a children's book I had growing up, where he has jaundiced skin and fiery hair:

Also, traditional Cossack costume:

For Vasilisa, I drew upon the mother and daughters from the (great) fantasy film The Golden Horns:



The Golden Horns also has a scene where the mother transforms into a kind of Russian Xena Warrior Princess if we end up doing a game with a more traditional warrior protagonist:


Finally, we TOTALLY need to incorporate elements of Russian lacquer boxes such as this in our scenery/plant life/whatever. It's so gorgeous: