Indie Illuminator – 2 Utah 4 U

Cheesy title? You bet. But I hope you’ll allow a groan-worthy title in exchange for two incredible indie illuminations in this week’s post. I’ll be attending Salt Lake Gaming Con next week as a spectator and gamer, but last year Robby and I had the opportunity to show off Alkanaur as developers. We exhibited our demo alongside several other fantastic indie dev teams in Utah, all belonging to a group called the Utah Games Guild.  I’d like to highlight two games from that group of Utah-based developers, both of which are on Steam and on sale as part of Steam’s annual summer shenanigans.

Screenshot found on We Need to Go Deeper's Steam page

The first game is We Need to Go Deeper by Deli Interactive LLC. Do you like Jules Verne? Do you love odd characters in odder outfits? Do you enjoy yelling at your friends as they fail to keep your submarine from sinking? If you do, I’d take a look at We Need to Go Deeper—currently in Early Access on Steam. The gameplay features cooperative play, procedurally-generated environments for replay value, and a fun, hand-drawn art style. 2-4 players frantically run from one task to another inside a submarine, using tools to fight off monstrous sea creatures and keep the submarine from sinking. My wife and I played a round together at last year’s SLGC and had a great time. You can pick it up for $6.49 right now with the current Steam sale.

Screenshot found on Legacy of the Elder Star's Steam page

The second game is Legacy of the Elder Star by Kickbomb Entertainment LLC. I was able to speak with both Kickbomb Entertainment’s lead designer and artist at length last summer, and they taught me a lot about the local indie games scene. But that wasn’t the first time I encountered Legacy of the Elder Star. I remember walking by a demo exhibition of this game two years ago and being blown away by the fun graphics and superb sound design. Legacy of the Elder Star is a fast-paced SHMUP (Shoot ‘em up) that features a unique, elegant control scheme: everything your character does is controlled by your mouse. If that interests you, checkout their Steam page where you can buy the game on sale until July 5^th for $2.49.

Dev Take Tuesday - Wonder Woman

My wife and I went to see Wonder Woman the week it came out, and we loved the film. I immediately knew I wanted to write a Dev Take post on the movie, but I wasn’t sure about what angle I’d go with. The more I reflect on the film, the more I’m drawn to that pivotal moment when Diana climbs out of the trench and enters No Man’s Land. The filmmakers didn’t hesitate to highlight this scene in multiple ways. (Note: I’ve only seen the movie once, so I apologize in advance if I got any details wrong.)

Image found on Entertainment Weekly

First, the film waits to incorporate Wonder Woman’s forceful, electric cello musical theme—first heard in the Batman vs Superman movie—until this moment, when Diana chooses to truly become Wonder Woman. Second, the lighting and color suddenly change as Diana lifts herself into No Man’s Land. She’s still surrounded by the muted, mostly grey color palette but the color of her uniform is bright, contrasting against the darkness and “moral grey” around her. Last, the narrative choice of her entering a place literally called “No Man’s Land” emphasizes a key theme of the movie: her outsider status as both a woman and a stranger to all of mankind.

Each of those decisions probably merits its own blog post, but the takeaway I ultimately garnered from all this is to do everything I can to boost the pivotal moments in my games and my games’ narratives. I’m sure it’s possible to oversell those moments, but I think it’s much easier to undersell them. As game designers we have a lot of tools at our disposal. We utilize many of the same tools as film, but we also add player interaction and game mechanics to our toolkit. In Alkanaur and any of my future games, I plan on using all those tools to ensure a powerful emotional response to the “No Man’s Land moments” in those games.

Indie Illuminator - Longsword Tabletop Tactics

I’ve likely put more hours into Heroscape than any other board game. And one of my favorite current hobbies—apart from game dev, of course—is painting miniatures.  Longsword Tabletop Tactics incorporates elements from both! You can check out the Kickstarter campaign here.

Gameplay gif found on Longsword's Kickstarter page

While our tactics game Alkanaur shares some design roots with Heroscape, the physical “miniatures” and hex-tiled battlegrounds of Longsword absolutely invoke that feeling of picking out a team from the available units in your collection and watching the battle unfold on the table. Each player summons units or casts spells turn by turn based on their available mana, and units move, use abilities, and attack based on a flexible action point system. Based on what I’ve seen in streams, it looks like units only have a few abilities each, but those abilities vary quite a bit.

Image found on Longsword's Kickstarter Page

Developer Zero Sum Games also includes a nifty unit-painting system that gives you a chance to adjust the hues of your armies and give them a more customized feel. It seems like a fun feature that adds to the collectible nature of the game. I’m excited to follow the development of Longsword and keep tabs on its progress. If you’re interested in the game, go ahead and check out their Kickstarter page to learn more about the game’s features, monetization strategies (they want to go free-to-play), and its crowdfunding backer rewards.

Dev Take Tuesday – Obnoxious Gandhis in Civ 6

Like many gamers, my gaming backlog is so long that I’ll likely never play them all. But recently I have been able to put many hours into one game I had my eye on since its release: Civ 6. The Civilization games are all about taking one small pre-Classical Era settlement and growing in technology, culture, and resources until you’re the top civilization in our current Information Age. You play against several other civilizations, each run by the A.I. and each with their own unique advantages, disadvantages, and tendencies. If you’ve heard anything about the Civilization series, you’ve probably heard about Civ’s greatest meme: Gandhi’s tendency to nuke everyone else out of existence.

Don't let that smile fool you. (Image found on PCGamesN)

What started as a programming error became a staple for every Civ game thereafter. Gandhi eschews war for most stages of the game, but gets nuke happy once the technology is available. As I’ve been playing Civ 6, I’ve seen a different take on this long-running joke in the franchise. In Civ 6, every civilization’s leader has one constant, visible personality quirk (called an agenda). Norway’s viking king Harald Hardrada, for example, loves other civilizations that have a strong navy. England’s Queen Victoria tries to settle on every continent. India’s Gandhi has a fairly unsurprising agenda: He rarely declares wars and generally befriends the more peaceful civilizations. But every leader also has a hidden agenda drawn from a pool of more universal tendencies, such as “explorers” or “money grubbers.” Gandhi was apparently weighted by the developers to get the “nuke happy” hidden agenda most of the time.

The result is a rather obnoxious Gandhi who gets mad at any war you start—no matter how just—but who also won’t hesitate to build up and utilize a nuclear arsenal. So what’s my game dev takeaway from the new approach to A.I. tendencies in Civ 6? I love it. One aspect of game development I didn’t consider before starting work on my first game is balancing fun design with work efficiency. A.I. coding gets tricky quick, but in a strategy game like Civ you really want to make sure the different factions feel unique. The relatively simple inclusion of two specific agendas per leader (one static and one random and hidden) allows the A.I. to have a personality that changes with each game and adds depth to the player’s strategic choices. We’re planning on a similar approach in Alkanaur. Enemies will have similar A.I. logic, but their roles on the battlefield (support, tank, assassin, etc.) will give them distinct “agendas.” We hope that those agendas will add variety and personality to the player’s enemies without adding an overabundance of work on our end.