• Interactive animations for pickups, food & drinks, medical items and more
  
• Storage looting mechanic
  
• Grid-style inventory improvements
  
• Streamlining efforts to polish core systems instead of spreading resources too thin.

• Integrating survival mechanics with player controller (i.e., falling from great heights will break your legs, drinking soda will replenish your hydration, etc.)
  
• Implementing crafting and cooking mechanics
  
• Creating and polishing procedural Arctic world
  
• Hand-crafting unique props relevant to our game’s setting

Psst: wishlist the game and join our discord to stay in touch.
Here's an invite link: https://discord.gg/8BMbZf7uN9


We took a short break in February to touch (grass) snow and reconnect with our family and friends, but now we’re back on the project and working hard on finishing up core mechanics of POLYARIS.
We strongly believe that small details can make a game extra immersive. That’s why we’re adding animations for most interactions in the game, such as using food and drink items. Take a look at this soda drinking animation:

Or this item pick-up animation, with automatic equip if a slot is available:

Where there’s loot, there’s got to be a lot of opportunities to find it! From abandoned huts to Arctic military bases, there will be many opportunities to look for supplies in POLYARIS.
Some loot will be lying on the ground, but most of it will be found in various storages, such as crates or dead bodies.

We have finished implementing storage looting mechanics. When you come across an unlooted storage, you will first have to go through a search animation by holding down an interaction key before you can see what’s inside the storage. The searching duration will depend on the type and complexity of a storage. If you have already searched a specific storage, you can open it instantly. Here’s a demonstration of this mechanic:

As we mentioned in our last dev update, we’ve switched to a grid-based inventory, where different items may take up several slots in your inventory and can also be rotated. This “tetris” mechanic fits well with the other mechanics centered around looting in POLYARIS.

Lately, we’ve added several usability improvements, such as moving items between storages with a click, double-clicking to equip an item, as well as dropping an item from the inventory with a single click.

We try to avoid third-party generalized assets as much as possible where it matters - to not lose the unique visual style of POLYARIS we’re trying to build. This primarily includes interactable items that you can pick up and use.

Here’s an example of the latest model we’ve created: a bottle of the traditional Scandinavian strong alcoholic drink, Akevitt:

That’s not everything, but these are the key details we can share for now. We’ll keep you posted.

Wishlist the game and join our discord to stay in touch.
Here's an invite link:
https://discord.gg/8BMbZf7uN9[/b]

After we closed our second playtest at the end of 2024, there was a lot of feedback to unpack regarding the core mechanics.

First and foremost, we want to focus on the four gameplay fundamentals of POLYARIS: survival, skiing, movement, and looting. We felt like we were trying to spread our efforts too thin in the last demo instead of focusing on what really matters.

Since January 2025 we’ve been deeply focused on reworking and improving our basic systems to come up with a better game, and I want to talk about some of them below.

Core Focus:

• Post-2024 playtest feedback drove a refocus on 4 pillars: survival, skiing, movement, and looting.
  
• Streamlining efforts to polish core systems instead of spreading resources too thin.

Survival System Overhaul:

• 30+ Health Modifiers (Afflictions): Added depth with effects like energy boosts (coffee), warmth gains (skiing), or radiation sickness.
  
• Body-Specific Impacts: Injuries (e.g., fractured leg) disable sprinting/skiing until treated, with lingering effects (e.g., "Frail Bone").
  
• New Health Recovery: No instant healing via medkits/food—restore health fully only by sleeping. Medical items now stop immediate threats (e.g., bleeding).

Visual Identity & Polish:

• Prioritizing unique art/style: revamped main menu, custom UI, and original 3D models.
  
• Reducing reliance on third-party assets for key visuals.
  
• Looting & Inventory:
  
• Introduced "Tetris" grid inventory: Manage weight and space by arranging items strategically.

Skiing Mechanics:

• Added first-person skiing animations to enhance immersion.
  
• Next steps: Integrate animations into player controllers for smoother, responsive controls.

Just having 4 bars for primary stats - such as warmth and hunger - doesn’t add much to the gameplay depth of a survival game, especially in POLYARIS. So we began adding a more in-depth affliction system which includes over 30 health modifiers - both positive and negative. Examples of such modifiers will be energy boosts from coffee and energy drinks, increased warmth from prolonged skiing, or an Acute Radiation Sickness if you expose yourself near a radiation source.

Each health modifier can also affect individual body parts. For example, if you fracture your leg, you will no longer be able to sprint or ski until you treat it with a splint. But even if you apply a splint, your bones will not heal immediately and you will get a Frail Bone effect which may cause fracture recurrence. The only way to fully heal it will be to sleep for a long enough period of time.

Talking about health, we’ve decided to move away from a traditional FPS health system where you can restore your health immediately by eating or using a medkit. Now, you can only effectively restore your health by sleeping, and only use medical items to stop an immediate health loss (for example, from bleeding).

We want to give a unique look and style to POLYARIS. A catchy main menu, sleek UI and original 3D-models are all great ways for this. Since there are only 3 of us, we oftentimes have to resort to some of the third-party marketplace assets for our game. However, we always want to make the most impactful visuals ourselves if we can, and only use other assets in areas where we are not confident in our abilities. Here are the examples of the visual stuff we’ve been working on in January.

Many games nowadays have what’s called a “Tetris”-style inventory, which represents a grid where items can take up multiple grid slots. We find this system quite amusing and fun to play around, especially when it comes to managing your inventory, since you not only have to keep an eye on the weight, but also arrange items in your backpack in a certain way so that they fit.
We have new shiny first-person skiing animations! This is the first step in making cross-country skiing mechanics feel more natural and fun to do. Next step will be integrating these animations into the player controller and improving the controls to make them more fluid and responsive.
That’s not everything, but these are the key details we can share for now. We’ll keep you posted.
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Cheers, mates!