Dev Diary #1: Welcome to the Submerged Land

Welcome to DREADMOOR, a world steeped in loneliness, melancholy, and quiet tension, where every faint echo or ripple is a hint that the world around you is never entirely still.

The world of DREADMOOR exists in a strange in-between state, changed, weathered, and reshaped over time, yet still unmistakably alive. Set in “The Submerged Land”, this post-apocalyptic reflection of our Earth bears the marks of radiation, Sea Blight, biotechnological failures, and the slow erosion that comes with time.

The world we are building is not a fully fictional world, nor a direct mirror of reality. Instead, it is a hybrid; you will come across familiar landscapes, albeit submerged beneath ever-rising waters, with only fragments of human civilization clinging to the surface.

What remains of the world is often weathered and overgrown with moss, unusual growths, and marked by the irradiated remnants of past human activity. Yet the world is not dead. Nature always finds a way to adapt, and in the Sumberged Land, nature has adapted in unexpected ways.

Strange creatures inhabit the waters, from the decaying swamps to the flooded ruins of humanity's past. Some of these creatures keep their distance, while others simply follow instincts shaped by this new environment.

And yet, amid the ruin and decay, rare sanctuaries can be found, small pockets of untouched nature remain. Calm, quiet, almost pristine, as if the land itself is trying to reject the corruption that consumed it.

From the very first moments that you enter the world of DREADMOOR, we want you to feel two truths deep in your bones:

1. You are a stranger here, and no one is waiting for you.

2. Silence is only the calm before the storm.

INSPIRATION AND VISION

When we first set out to create DREADMOOR, we knew that a big part of the work would go into creating the game's atmosphere, one that is quiet, uneasy, and tense. On top of that, the aim was to create a game that is first and foremost focused on adventure and the survival experience, and through it make the players think, at least for a while, of humanity’s impact on the planet.

How did it begin? It all began with a single premise: what if humanity grew to an extent that, in its hubris, it found a way to use the Earth itself as a weapon, and what if that backfired?

In the world of DREADMOOR, that is exactly what happened. An experimental device, designed to manipulate Earth's magnetic fields, was activated during a time when desperation ran rampant, and the consequences were catastrophic. The poles suddenly shifted, the climate dramatically changed, and across the continents, the crust fractured, and much of the land sank beneath the waves.

For humanity, what followed was the collapse of the world order. The survivors of the initial catastrophe soon found themselves divided and struggled to adapt, sparking conflicts between the survivors. Worse, modern industry shut down, leaving behind vast amounts of toxic chemicals and radioactive material. Unguarded, unmanaged, unwatched, slowly the safeguards failed, and leaks began to poison the environment. As the contaminants seeped into the oceans, the ecosystem changed in ways no one anticipated, ultimately giving birth to the Sea Blight.

In time, new species appeared, creatures shaped by the blighted waters. Some of these new creatures were aggressive, posing a real danger to anyone venturing into their domains, especially in the flooded ruins where both humans and wildlife competed for space.

Every location in DREADMOOR carries the weight