Style and Tone

Fourth Place is a game about living in a world handed down to you, when your creators are dead and gone. It is about exploring the ruins of the mysterious dead, living in a dangerous world of limited resources, and conflict and cooperation with others to live. When a safe haven is established, full of resources to be shared, will everyone receive? Will everyone be happy?

Fourth Place is intended to be a post-apocalyptic speculative fiction game. 'Tragedy' has been and gone, and the future seems far more hopeful than it is depressing. Following the human extinction, there will be a sense of rebuilding and rekindling by the new peoples of Earth. It is an era of progression after the depression caused by the sudden loss of humanity. Nonetheless, the human legacy remains seen across the world in their ruins and the very fact that the new sapient creatures on Earth were all created by them.

Throughout the game, players will be exploring the Fourth Place, negotiating with different types of people, and learning about their own and the theme park's history. Characters will come from various backgrounds, affected by different issues and concerned about different things, in order to help decide how the Fourth Place should be run and guide its exploration, in the face of its main resource funnel being broken. Characters can be charismatic leaders, resourceful scavengers, shifty sabotagers, lonely ones seeking company, faithful pilgrims, and more. As the Earth is just beginning her healing period, what do you want out of this renaissance?

Characters will be divided into Kingdoms (one of the four 'species' of sapient people): animal, plant, fungus, or robot. Originally made by the long-gone humans, they will navigate a world without their creators, with different wants and needs to sustain themselves. Now capable of the same level of critical thought as humanity, their only differences are of their physical bodies, and the culture that is created by them.

The Organisations also add to these, another aspect to the complexity of the Kingdoms, where opinions and beliefs still differ person-by-person, based on various circumstances of birth, fortune, and upbringing. Do they resent their creators, or worship them? What do they aim to do, and will they join with others in community to achieve this? Will you seek peace with other groups or want to quash them? In the grassroots of a new society, who is the most deserving?

Major themes of Fourth Place include:

• Exploration and survival
• Introspection and purpose
• Conflict and cooperation
• History, legacy, and how it affects the present

Fourth Place draws inspiration from many sources, but major ones include:

• Rain World by Videocult
• Smile For Me by YugoLimbo Games
• Fallout by Obsidian Entertainment
• Horizon Zero Dawn by Guerilla Games
• Deltarune by Tony Fox
• Flow by Dream Well Studios
• Nausicaä and the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki
• FRLG.ips by Novameow
• Five Nights At Freddy's II by Scott Cawthon