Arenum: a fantasy arena management game

[Samppu]

Hi everyone here at rpgcodex!

One guy at our indieDB-site encouraged me to tell you about this project. So let's get started!

Arenum is a fantasy arena management game. What this basically means is that you buy slaves (who all have different traits, stats, race, skill etc.) and then fight against other teams in your league. Your gladiators level up, gain new skills, you can buy them items and train their combat abilities (such as melee, swords, clubs, crossbows). Your ultimate goal is to become the winner of the Legendary League.

There are 30 different races in the game (dragon, wyvern, goblin, human, high elf... the list goes on and they all have their own unique ability, for example zombies can rise from the dead), 20 different traits and we are aiming to have about 100 items and 10 enchantments and a lots of different events (like slave rebellions, wars and stuff like that) in the game.

The game is currently WIP but we released a demo version (which is kinda unstable, misses a lot of features but gives you an idea of the game) at the same time with our indiegogo-campaign (we need to raise as much money as possible for few things).

If you are interested about this game make sure you visit our indiegogo.com campaign. You can download the demo version and learn more about the project there. And if you like the project please donate money! We are very small indie game studio and at this stage every buck is needed.

Also we are listening to all kinds of comments from you guys and we really implement the features you'd like to see in the game!

Here's the trailer:


And here's the full list of features:

• Seven different tournaments (Slaves' League, Warriors' League, Heroes' League, Supreme League, Legendary League, The Continental Cup, The Grand Skirmish)
• Randomly created gladiators; more than a hundred million possibilities!
• Customize your gladiators by buying them equipment, leveling them up, enchanting their items, changing their wages, training them by hiring masters and in many other ways!
• Gladiators will also earn experience in different combat abilities such as crossbows, light armor, swords and clubs.
• The presence of magic is strong! Learn magic with your gladiator and choose from fourteen different spells.
• Fight against fifty teams controlled by AI. They'll also striving to win their way to the top of Legendary League!
• Tactical turn-based combat with thousands of different possible tactics!
• A nice retro feeling in the game; pixelated graphics, 8-bit sound effects and music!
• A multiplayer mode! Take up your team against randomly chosen teams of your level across the world and try to reach the top of the online team rankings!
• The Grand Skirmish tournament will pit you against foreign teams of the fantasy world every four in-game years. You'll see them using different technology and items. There might be even foreign races that you are not used to!
• A versatile, interesting gameplay that will last for at least fifty hours!
• Many events, for example, wars and slave rebellions! Events will have impact on the arena and your gladiators.
• You can research new technology! There's 25 items you can discover when researching.

Screenshots, demo versio etc. all available at indiegogo-page!
Check it out!

Thanks!
- Abnodie Games

 

[Haba]

Another of those ones, eh. They must put something in the tap water that makes one want to code fantasy arena games:
- http://www.seppos.net/areena.html
- http://www.battlesofnorghan.com/
etc.

Anyway, one thing that has made good arena games good is the fact that your gladiators constantly develop. I'd say that simply raising stats and skills isn't enough if you're planning to have lengthy campaigns. You really want to have your minotaur warrior feel unique athlete instead of a carbon copy cannon fodder.

In the same vein, quite often (always) you lack a proper adversary. Even some minor between battle fluff news-pieces would help. You want to hype up strong opponents so that you'll be excited when you finally meet them. Not every enemy team member needs to be unique snowflake, but it helps. I think arena games could also steal quite a few ideas from sports movies and incorporate those turns of events in the game.

Best of luck in any case.

 

[Samppu]

*text*

Hey, thanks! And yes, we have thought of both of your points. The gladiators will develop, constantly. In addition to combat abilities, skills, attributes and levels they will develop in fame. More famous gladiators will get you more income and they'll have their very own events (fans attack, sabotage or something like that).

We've also been thinking a lot how to make few teams unique and something that you are actually afraid of. Our team generator makes some teams much better than others and players can even now see that some teams are winning most of their matches and some are losing like every match they play. Probably we will add something like news or rumors to add a little more depth into it.

Thank you very much for your comments! I'd like to hear more, and if you like this project please donate!

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Developers/spambots who post here are so bloody polite.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Arenum = Avernum + Arcanum?

 

[Samppu]

Hey, I am not a spam bot!

And actually I am not entirely sure how we came up with the name Arenum. I think we just wanted to have something like "arena" and "num" is (as far as I know) very normal Latin ending for a word... anyone ever played Rome: Total War? All city names are like Galicunum or stuff like that. Or maybe it's not Latin, maybe it's Gallic. Heck, I don't know!

Usually I am not this polite but I am a new guy here so being polite is the best way to approach I think... but thanks anyways!

 

[Excidium]

Looks p. cool and free so it's even better. Good luck!

 

[Johannes]

In the rewards with all the talk of pre-alphas and closed betas, I can't clearly make out where you get the final version of the game?

Edit: oh nvm, it's free. Nice.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Looks p. cool and free so it's even better. Good luck!

It's free? I take back my spambot comment then.

 

[Mangoose]

I rather like the music in the trailer.

 

[deuxhero]

Will it be as good as the last fantasy arena management game?

 

[adure]

this should be a browsergame!

 

[Samppu]

Yeah, the game is free but we actually might have few things players would be able to buy to their game from the website. Like additional races, cool new skins to brag about in the multiplayer, special colored name in the global chat and stuff like that. With these kind of things players would be able to support the game in future so we can keep updating the game and keep the server up.

And thanks for nice comments! If you think this project is worth of donating to please do so. Even one dollar will help us a lot!

EDIT: Oh, more messages!

deuxhero: I can guarantee you; this will be much better than Gladius! And it's free!
adure: There is a possibility that we port this game to HTML5, actually my co-worker have already offered to convert the whole game for browser. So I'd say there's a very high possibility that we do that in future.
Mangoose: My trailer-making-skills are not very good. That is my second trailer I have ever made. And the music is awesome, it's composed by our musician dbmisterfuzzy who also makes the soundtrack for Arenum. The soundtrack is going to be 85% 8-bit, which is pretty neat.

Psst. Johannes is a Finnish name - you're also a Finn? If so, hyvää illanjatkoa ja kiitos kivasta kommentista!

 

[Jasede]

I dig the font.

 

[Samppu]

I dig the font.

Thanks!

And anyways, I decided to do a battle-HUD overhaul. Also I have already done some great improvements on AI (they now use some basic formations like line, ranks, groups etc. and I'll also make few "behaviors" for the AI like aggressive, defensive, targeting and eliminating).

Take a look at the new battle-HUD box to get the idea what I'm working on:

You'll also be able to make the HUD boxes smaller and move them around. At least that is what I am planning... not sure what the outcome is!

 

[Zed]

Besides the silly name and my personal gripe towards "fake pixel graphics" (a.k.a "flash pixel graphics" - one pixel should be one pixel, god damn it!), this looks like it could be fun. I wish you good luck with the funding campaign.

 

[asper]

Ok, looks interesting, but what are those big ass direction buttons on the right? Are you already optimizing this for tablets?

Be sure to look at Knights of the Chalice to see how to do turn-based group combat in a fun way. Also, consider adding obstacles on the area to diversify tactics.

Colour me interested.

 

[laclongquan]

The most important, and usual, contribution from me to developers is this:

Can we buy some tits-and-asses characters? Can we assemble a group of nekkid ladies to pound the living hell out of other nekkid lady-opponents?

Because that is the thing to draw your initial players in. Everything else is to keep them playing, but the above is to draw them in.

 

[Haba]

Amazons from the planet Lezbos. I'd buy that!

Too bad it 'aint for sale :/

Next someone will suggest romances between the gladiators and emotional engagement.

*cough*

Anyway, since you're working on AI behaviour, some more complex ones could work as well. I.e. enemies working as a team (with formations), boxing your squad in and then flanking them. Should be doable with a small grid map. Similar scripts for magic as well, if applicable. Basically expanding the AI scripting to keep the "big picture" in mind, theoretically planning ahead several turns.

Basically the enemy doing the same thing as the player: "Let's form a line here, brawlers in front, mages and archers behind. Move forward in formation, thief flanks and attempts backstab". Probably shouldn't happen always and maybe some types of characters would be less likely to follow the instructions...

 

[Samppu]

Zed: Thanks! I used to hate the fake-pixelated graphics as well and I still kinda do but this is the best I can do (I am not a great graphics artist and even worse animator). One guy already offered to do some graphics to this game, here's a sample he/she sent me:

We might hire him, but I have bad experiences about graphic artists that are not paid... they usually like to draw few sprites and then disappear.

asper: A very old game called "Areena" is one of our "sources of inspiration" for this project and it did have those huge buttons. We are already planning to remove them as we overhaul the battle HUD. If we ever port this game for Android (for that we need 400$, please donate us some!) those buttons are going to make a comeback.

laclongquan: Yes... I'd really like to have some big-ass tit-pounding bikini-chain mail ladies in the game. But as I said above, I am not an excellent sprite artist but if we hire this graphics artist I mentioned I might implement genders for gladiators so we'd have female ogres and skeletons... plus humans

And guys, all money you donate towards this project will be used to make it as good as possible (not for beer and hamburgers). So if you like the idea please throw few bucks in!

EDIT:

Haba:

Yes! That is what I am currently working on. The AI already (if it decides to place gladiators in ranks) puts magicians and archers behind the melee-line.

And the behavior will make the AI work more like a team (for example it will make gladiators to smaller groups and then put the groups attacking the strongest enemy characters). I made a small picture about how the AI will work, it's a bit messy but I hope you understand it!

The messy design picture of doom

 

[Zed]

Man o man. If you can do fake pixelation, you can do real pixelation! Just cram that shit into 320x240 and fullscreen it!
I prefer the style you already have over that artists' sample. Yours is a little more abstract, but way more unique and less JRPG'ish.

 

[joeydohn]

Sounds cool. I like the graphics and love that you didn't make the combat log text match it so that it's actually readable.

 

[Samppu]

Zed: Yeah but it destroys all fonts and makes them a pain to your eyes. I like to have fonts sharp and nice lookin'. And thanks!
joeydohn: Thanks!

I'm kinda confused at the moment. Many people say that "yeah, I love this graphics style it's so unique" and stuff but then there's lots of people who say that they hate it! So what should I do? Hiring this graphics artist would save a lot work from me but if he/she suddenly quits it causes lots of trouble and I am not yet sure if I can trust him/her. Doing graphics by myself is time consuming and many people seems to hate this kind of graphics, one guy even said that "why couldn't you just draw normal graphics? This would look like shit even on 8-bit Nintendo". Having graphics from the artist would be not-so-original but still cool and and it could satisfy everyone. We also would have animations and genders and stuff...

What to do? Any comments/ideas?

 

[Don Peste]

Is this what you would get?

RPG Maker generic anime graphics? It may (or may not...) save you work, but it's awful.

I like pixel art style (games like Don't Look Back or Cavenaut). I think it will give you a distinctive look, and that's very important.

Being able to edit the characters would be nice. Is it possible?

 

[Samppu]

What do you mean by "editing"? You'll be able to customize your characters by changing their equipment, leveling them up (when character levels up you get to spend one attribute point and one skill point), training them and stuff like that. Also there are going to be events that can change your gladiator drastically - I mean for example when they ask for better salary you can say no which can end up in a nice chain of events