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Infiltration - ancient evil god game simulator

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Gornova:
You are not dead, you are not living.. yet.

Aeons ago, in a time before mith, your enemies sigil you in a realm far from reality. Weakened and far from your power, your will simply.. disappear.
One echo, from time to time, hit your dreams. Something called humanity is playing with arcane power and forgotten knowledge, part of you.
You simply awaken and take a look into the world. These "humans" will serve you as puppets in your quest to become powerful, again.


TLTR: released version 1.0, so please take a look on my blog


Some screenshots



In this screenshot updated city interface, on bottom you can see districts


In this screenshot you can see updated character interface with new resources: money, followers and influence


I'm interested in build a game inspired to TWS, not the same game a mooore smaller game and without money.
This is not a call for kickstarter, just a simple discussion on how organize a game that inspired to TWS, in the following way:


a turn based single player asymmetric game where player take control of an agent and manipulate actors and organizations to obtain victory


I'm intrigued on this topic, so in the following points I'd like to discuss with anyone some points:

turn based: I prefer a game when skill is not how faster you are on click on something, but instead quality of your strategy and tactic's decisions. As example think different between chess and starcraft 2

single player: much simpler, I like single player games, not too much to discuss here

asymmetric: in most of the game there are more than one side and every side can do most of the time same actions to alter game state and obtain victory (poker? hearthstone? risk ?).
I'm intrigued in games that does not have this structure, and in my "vision" this kind of game are asymmetric. Player can do actions that other "ai controlled players" or "entities" in the game cannot do.
This is a crucial point in my idea and the following are just some ideas:
- player can force other actors to do a specific actions
- player can hide from other actors, but leave behind some clues
- other actors can raise armies, command in battle and star wars
- other actors can promote actors in an organization and give them new actions and privileges to do
I hope you get the idea

take control of an agent: in original TWS vision player is a god-like ancient being that can interact in limited way into material world. Very weak at start, get more power unlocking special places or rituals. In order to obtain these powers, player get direct control on an agent (or very few ones) to manipulate other actors. This is also interesting for me, because is a key point in the "asymmetric" vision point. An agent has some style of play: for example an assassin vs a thief. Two separate paths, actions and different kind of manipulations

manipulate actors and organizations: like I've said before, every organization (a merchant guild, a private company, government) has some actors in key points that can be manipulated and forced to act in a specific way.
An example should be find with thief inside notable's house some key documents and use them to introduce thief in a secret guild.

obtain victory: obtain victory in my simplified vision is to unlock the X power of the ancient being or find special places or objects. Is not so important in the end what to do. But in order to obtain victories you need informations and where found informations? In key places in organizations that can point you in the right direction, unlocking new places and so on.


A first experiment

Given these coordinates, my thoughts was directed to create a small paper-based prototype with setting in modern days (again, is not important the setting for now, could be fantasy, horror, modern or futuristic).
My process was the following:

1) create a tree-like structure for 2 unlocked organizations (mafia and freemasonry) +1 hide organization (templars guild). Every organization has at least three levels and last two levels provide bonuses to actors inside
2) create a template for every actor, like a character sheet, with following values:
- name
- role (see below)
- money, 0-10
- attack, 0-10
- health, 0-10
- arcane, 0-10
- madness, 0-10 (see below)
3) decide how to handle combat, following hearthstone rules: attack vs health and both attackers and defenders can be damaged. Basic stuff, I know. Only twist, player can decide to use arcane vs health, to model some king of magic attack, not related to strenght
4) every actor can move inside an organization if there is a free space (move to the top, where there are more higher bonuses) . If space is not empty, an actor can attack an enemy (see below)
5) roles dictate possible actions, like for example spend 3 money and set -3 money to a target enemy. Roles can do more advanced actions gaining madness
6) madness is an unlocking factor to new powerful actions, like killing other actors but when is more than 10, turn actor in an enemy automatically and every actor in the organization can attack it
7) so I've created a set of actors (24) and roles (9 generic and 1 specific for actors for every organization: ganster, freemanson(?) and templar)
8) every X turns every organization recruit a new actor
9) each node of every organization get a chance at start to get a mission, where a mission is a specific challenge, unlocked from base characteristics (like arcane 5) and gives you a reward if you overcome that challenge (with a dice roll) or a "bad stuff". Also on top of every organization there is an hard challenge that unlock one of the three items to obtain victory
10) I've setup the board with two organization with actors and get player first actor selecting it from three random actors

Result of the first game: my actor get to top of the organization with some planning and some luck (two actors get weakened each other) but get killed from a brand new actor. In other organization, a top level actor win a mission and get so much arcane that he can destroy everyone in the organization.

My feedback: Is not what I want in a game. Maybe is because is a game where I can see everything, so I can predict most of the possible actions of every actor, but is not so fun. Fun in my vision is to find a combination of actions of my agent that unlock new agents and give access to new actions, with an increasing butterfly effect in game world and in the end change balance in the world.. maybe in a way that I really don't know yet.


Sorry for the wall of text, I think bay12 forum is the kind of community that could give me:
1) advice on how to proceeed
2) inspiration on sources, books, films (or anime, like Code Geass, it's an awesome mix between mech battles, manipulations, politics and magic powers)
3) sources: board games, videogames
4) ideas on how model properly game elements

thanks!


note: If you know something on TWS, I want to model and find a really simply gameplay, not model and entire world with a lot of overlapping systems and many mechanics, I'm interested to find a way to describe and program the core experience the loop: decide a strategy, do some actions, infiltrate/manipulate, get feedback

Urist McScoopbeard:
Honestly, this is probably an idea you can prototype pretty easily. Assuming you can't program it yourself, you should build a tabletop version.

Gornova:
(quick reply, thanks!)

I'm a dev and I want to develop by myself, but before to start I need to think on main base "loop" and validate if is fun, interesting and has a meaning of someone else other than me :D

forsaken1111:
If you own tabletop simulator you can use that to prototype mechanics like this. I do it a lot when I'm designing boardgame systems. If not you can just use game pieces from other boardgames or whatever else you have handy to simulate the mechanic and see how it feels.

Gornova:
I'm on the point of prototyping and currently I'm stuck on define what is fun in a manipulation/infiltration game, hoping for some feedback on that too

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