BONEWATER

Short

BONEWATER is a calm first-person game about returning home to a riverside village in Sarawak. You carry boards, set traps and lay planks, and the water, the tide and the weather answer.

Long

BONEWATER follows a return toward home along raised timber routes in a Melanau-inspired riverside setting. Each of the six chapters in Part 1 is built around one everyday activity in one place: testing a damaged landing, finishing a hat, working sago, crossing a tidal flat, lifting goods above a flood, and hanging the hat by the door. There is no combat and no failure screen. If a plank is the wrong one, it sags and floats back, and you try the other.

The environment is built from small scripts at runtime, and the sound comes from original field recordings made on a coastal tidal flat. The game is made by one developer using AI tools for code help, review and early concept art; concept art and gameplay footage are always labelled separately.

A note on culture

The setting is Melanau-inspired and is not presented as a claim of tradition. Cultural details are marked reference-pending until Melanau reviewers have checked them. Please describe it as inspired by, and in development.