Guy de Incognito
Ensit Media
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2015
- Messages
- 59
https://occidentalheroes.com
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wlxd.retrorpg.android
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/occidental-heroes/id1355481701
One man army here, developing a mobile RPG on no budget. What could possibly go wrong?
The good:
The bad:
The ugly:
Here are some screenshots of how it looks like at the moment. I've organized them so they tell the story of how the game is played and organized. Everything is playable and stable and I'm thinking of publishing it on Google Play just for testing purposes. Will most likely wait a few weeks to finish the quest system and replace some art I've stolen.
Party generation. There are 3 PC classes and 15 backstories at the moment, each with a special ability and a goal which gives another special ability to that character. The game is pretty vague about the former and secretive about the latter, so it will be a surprise to the player when they reach the goal. The coat of arms has 12 background patterns, 33 logos and 14 colors for various elements
The world map is made out of hexagons. The final map will be 120x40 but on release I'm aiming for 40x40. The player is constrained by supplies his party needs to travel (traveling off roads consumes a lot more supply) so the map feels larger than the numbers suggest. There are forests, hills, rivers, bridges, other types of forests, beaches, mountains, roads, deserts and swamps. Most of these terrain types are reflected on the tactical maps.
The tactical map is 8x9 tiles. Combatants move in a randomly established order and the kind of moves and attacks they can make are determined by their class. There are no stats like strength, endurance, dexterity, rolls and all that - you have only the kind of attacks your class can do and the number of hits you can take before you die. It's kind of like chess with obstacles. The deaths are permanent, unless you happen to have a surgeon in your party and he gets lucky.
Every character background (15 total at the moment) has some kind of special ability that helps either in combat, on the world map or in interactions with other characters. Some abilities are immediately apparent while others have some kind of trigger. For the surgeon, one of your party members has to die for you to be told that a surgeon has or could have revived them. The others... well, part of the fun is finding out.
The interactions in locations and encounters are inspired by the 1994 Microprose's historical CRPG Darklands. That game cost $3 million to make and was a commercial failure, so I thought why not go that route? If you haven't played Darklands, you really should.
Finally we have the ledger, which is the word I like to use for a journal. Once a character dies or retires, an entry about them is added in the Former party members section. Each character will have their own retirement options based on whether they've achieved the goal of their background story and how much money they earned while adventuring. That and buying supplies and pack animals will be the main use for money in this game. I'm sure most people won't even read these entries, but I really like that kind of stuff so there it is.
Well that's it, that's my game so far. Comments are appreciated.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wlxd.retrorpg.android
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/occidental-heroes/id1355481701
One man army here, developing a mobile RPG on no budget. What could possibly go wrong?
The good:
- can be played on pretty much any Android 4+ on screens 480x800 and up
- can be played with one hand (do what you want with the other)
- has a pretty robust (and mandatory) autosave which means you can quit any time and it will just continue where you left off
- very likely it's going to be finished because all the technical challenges have been overcome and the money can't run out because there was no money to begin with
The bad:
- developed by someone who hates the vast majority of games so it's unlikely to have mass appeal
- lots of text because... gamers love reading, right?
- no reloading because... gamers love permadeath, right?
- no stats or leveling or fiddling with the inventory because they were just getting in the way
- pixel graphics... most of which will be redrawn by the best pixel artist $50 can buy, which brings us to...
The ugly:
Here are some screenshots of how it looks like at the moment. I've organized them so they tell the story of how the game is played and organized. Everything is playable and stable and I'm thinking of publishing it on Google Play just for testing purposes. Will most likely wait a few weeks to finish the quest system and replace some art I've stolen.
Party generation. There are 3 PC classes and 15 backstories at the moment, each with a special ability and a goal which gives another special ability to that character. The game is pretty vague about the former and secretive about the latter, so it will be a surprise to the player when they reach the goal. The coat of arms has 12 background patterns, 33 logos and 14 colors for various elements
The world map is made out of hexagons. The final map will be 120x40 but on release I'm aiming for 40x40. The player is constrained by supplies his party needs to travel (traveling off roads consumes a lot more supply) so the map feels larger than the numbers suggest. There are forests, hills, rivers, bridges, other types of forests, beaches, mountains, roads, deserts and swamps. Most of these terrain types are reflected on the tactical maps.
The tactical map is 8x9 tiles. Combatants move in a randomly established order and the kind of moves and attacks they can make are determined by their class. There are no stats like strength, endurance, dexterity, rolls and all that - you have only the kind of attacks your class can do and the number of hits you can take before you die. It's kind of like chess with obstacles. The deaths are permanent, unless you happen to have a surgeon in your party and he gets lucky.
Every character background (15 total at the moment) has some kind of special ability that helps either in combat, on the world map or in interactions with other characters. Some abilities are immediately apparent while others have some kind of trigger. For the surgeon, one of your party members has to die for you to be told that a surgeon has or could have revived them. The others... well, part of the fun is finding out.
The interactions in locations and encounters are inspired by the 1994 Microprose's historical CRPG Darklands. That game cost $3 million to make and was a commercial failure, so I thought why not go that route? If you haven't played Darklands, you really should.
Finally we have the ledger, which is the word I like to use for a journal. Once a character dies or retires, an entry about them is added in the Former party members section. Each character will have their own retirement options based on whether they've achieved the goal of their background story and how much money they earned while adventuring. That and buying supplies and pack animals will be the main use for money in this game. I'm sure most people won't even read these entries, but I really like that kind of stuff so there it is.
Well that's it, that's my game so far. Comments are appreciated.
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