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[Chobeat]

I rarely get an interest in games in such an early stage but this one looks very promising because these guys look uncompromising and know their shit about archeology and paleo-anthropology. This is exactly the game I hoped for. Also it's set in a usually misrepresented time period: neolithic. Everytime I go into a museum with my girlfriend (paleo-anthropologist) I see how lively and complex was the world at that time and I wonder why no fucking game ever captured that. Now maybe there's a chance.

The game is currently on Kickstarter and they have a very ambitious goal for an unknown developer: 100k in 2 weeks. They are half-way through and it's not yet clear if they will successfully finance the game but there's still hope. Here's the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/uncasualgames/ancient-cities?ref=user_menu

Some info about the game:

Main features

Build your city through the ages with evolving gameplay
Simulated years, seasons, day cycles and weather
Simulated ecosystem where every plant and animal you see is growing, reproducing and dying
Exploit and take care of it
Natural disasters
Build your defenses to protect your city. Ancient times were harsh!
Switchable gameplay layers like combat or natural disasters.
Play your game!
Organic city layouts let you plan and build your city in a realistic way
Wonders, including megaliths!
Very innovative technology system
Politics, religion, social classes and family structures
Every citizen's attributes, experience and knowledge are simulated.
Each citizen has their own aspirations and decides how to live, where they work and if they come or leave the city.
Economy, resource management and production chains including clothing, tools, food, wares, etc...
Buildings and resources decay. No more bread lasting for years!
Simulated world context and migrations.
Different factions use trading, fighting and influence to dominate the world.

Some screens:

[Rose]

Looks neat.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

As a Banished addict, I really hope this gets developed and released. Hopefully they'll pull through.

[Chobeat]

"Simulated ecosystem where every plant and animal you see is growing, reproducing and dying"

I can see this one being a resource hog.

Still, willing to keep an eye on it.

Not really. I mean, we are used to Dwarf Fortress that is full of bottlenecks because the developer had no big experience before starting the development and he wasn't a computer scientist either. But as a developer that tried to develop agent-based model in games, I would say that with the right patterns (async and parallel modeling, mostly) and modern machines you can scale way more than what you can expect from a naive approach. If you go for a behaviour-rich game with milions of entities you design it from the beginning to be able to scale. In 2017, if you don't, you deserve to crash and burn but I trust the devs of Ancient Cities and hope they know their shit. A few thousands plants in a map won't kill the performances.

[n9103]

Looks interesting, but 25$ bottom buy-in isn't worth it to me for an unknown dev.
Not to mention that they're pretty much using this to fund the engine development, (i.e. they're going to be less concerned with the content in this release.)

we expect Ancient Cities to become a powerful game platform for next developments

Guess this is just a PTW then.

[Mephansteras]

Hmmm. Well, I approve of the concept. Not sure it'll make its goal or not, but I'll back it. Hopefully something good comes from it!

[Scripten]

The aesthetic style and animations are surprisingly good for this early in development of a sim game especially.

[forsaken1111]

PTW but I doubt they're going to meet that goal. Still will consider backing as it looks great

[feelotraveller]

Looks like a cool game. 

Would probably throw them a few bucks if they weren't developing a game exclusively for windows. 

[rant] Shit they should announce (clearly at least, there is a note buried deep somewhere...) that they are a microsoft franchise.  "Developing for PC" what a euphemism. [/rant]

[lordcooper]

https://puu.sh/wsKUb/1bad020d2d.png

That's a bit like buying a Betamax VCR and complaining when a small studio ignores it in favour of VCR.

[Yolan]

Looks lovely. Something to keep an eye on.

[forsaken1111]

Looks like a cool game. 

Would probably throw them a few bucks if they weren't developing a game exclusively for windows. 

[rant] Shit they should announce (clearly at least, there is a note buried deep somewhere...) that they are a microsoft franchise.  "Developing for PC" what a euphemism. [/rant]

Even if not a microsoft franchise, developing for windows is the only efficient strategy. Most gamers use windows. If you want sales, you develop for the majority of your audience. I have seen a few postmortems where the devs regretted all of the money and time spend porting to linux/mac for all of ~300 sales.

[feelotraveller]

Looks like a cool game. 

Would probably throw them a few bucks if they weren't developing a game exclusively for windows. 

[rant] Shit they should announce (clearly at least, there is a note buried deep somewhere...) that they are a microsoft franchise.  "Developing for PC" what a euphemism. [/rant]

Even if not a microsoft franchise, developing for windows is the only efficient strategy. Most gamers use windows. If you want sales, you develop for the majority of your audience. I have seen a few postmortems where the devs regretted all of the money and time spend porting to linux/mac for all of ~300 sales.

Perhaps, perhaps not.  We will derail the thread if we have this argument here. 

My gripe here is not that though, rather it is that they pretend that the are developing for the 'PC' when they develop for windows.  Figures for market share vary but generally in the region of 80-90% for one OS.  Imagine 10-20% of your community dieing overnight, well yeah it's a significant proportion.  Why not just say 'game for windows'?

[lordcooper]

96% of people with Steam accounts are running Windows. 

[Leyic]

Uh, the third line of the campaign page says "When released, the game will be available on Steam for PC Windows, other platforms to be determined." Maybe they added it after you posted, but that's about as clear as can be.

Anyhow, I don't see anything that says they're a Microsoft franchise. Furthermore, "Games for Windows" is a Microsoft brand (albeit discontinued) so they'd probably get into legal trouble with Microsoft if they did use it.