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[Musenik]

BRIEF DESCRIPTION


Guide one family's generations through ancient times. An enormous tableau of the rise of western culture awaits your exploration, but the game starts with a simple, absorbing mechanic that expresses a common facet of life, two steps forward one step back.

Then, like layers upon a pearl, game play expands, allowing fresh tactics and strategies which, turn by turn, drive a sophisticated, emergent narrative. How you play defines the lives of one family's generations through the changing ages.

Watch Trailer


It isn't your great-grans' cabinet arcade, but it was inspired by them.

Demos now available at:

7grandsteps.com

Guide a family legend through the ages.


Starting the game.




Climbing the social tracks

[Zaphos]

Oh dear uspto  Hopefully the name change isn't too problematic!  New title sounds nice to me.



Looking at the screens ... I don't normally have opinions on fonts, but looking at the screen shots, I can't help feel there's something ... off? amateurish? about some of the text, especially the yellow 'resume/new game/tutorial' text.  The actual title text looks good, but all other text just doesn't integrate well for some reason.


(aside: your link to previous devlog is actually a link to a screenshot right now.)

[Musenik]

The actual title text looks good, but all other text just doesn't integrate well for some reason.

(aside: your link to previous devlog is actually a link to a screenshot right now.)

We'll definately be changing the fonts. The game has another 30% to go before we start that level of polish. But thanks for saying so. We take comments like that to heart.

Link fixed.

[Musenik]

It's a little weird to be reporting that the special surprise inside 7 Grand Steps is now functional and somewhat balanced.

Next, the changing of the ages!

Six weeks until the IGF deadline. Looking pretty tight, right now, even considering the ability to post updates after the deadline.


so much more to do

[Musenik]

I've decided to submit 7 Grand Steps to the IGF next year. It's not yet the best it can be. Given the competition, a game needs to be it's best to win.

However, the sprint to try and make the IGF resulted in a lot of great work done and bugs squashed.

We're now at 60%!!!

Next goal is to present the game to journalists in late Nov. for them to preview. This requires reworking the tutorial. (not a major overhaul, fortunately) After that, I can start writing stories for the iron age! Then we'll be 70% complete!

looking forward to it,

[Destral]

Still really excited to try this out when it's ready

[Musenik]

Thanks Destral.

minor update:
One of the benefits of skipping the IGF is I can totally munge the codebase! Ripped out the font system between pygame and pygl2d. and installed one based on python glue to freetype.

[Musenik]

Today I finished first drafts for the iron age romance, rite of passage, and social uplift stories. Next 18 discovery stories.

[Musenik]

Today I finished thirty 'guide' stories for the iron age. Those and the 18 discovery stories took 2 months to write. Still more to write: 7 heroic challenges and 4 Challenges of the Age!

I'm taking a break from writing and will work on the special surprise in the bronze age. Yea, I'm a coder again!

I may revert the new font system. Seems like a lot of code bulk was added, it runs slower, and there's another way to fix the original problems.

[Musenik]

7 Grand Steps is now at 70%!!! Whew! It was a tough and important milestone.

Three days late. I had hoped to finish writing the last major story content in April. Still we have reached CONTENT COMPLETE!  ...which basically means there are sufficient stories for every part of the game, and all game feature are now in place and mostly working. We'll be adding more stories but as needed: rewriting poor stories, adding diversity to existing stories.

For the rest of development our focus will be on improving the game: POLISH, POLISH, POLISH!

First up: a new take on the tutorial. Will it work better than the okay one we have already? It's not a complex game, but it's so different and people are SO LAZY... :-)  Then we'll add connective tissue between steps and a way for multiple people to have save games, via family names.

Onward!

[sabajt]

woo really nice to hear an update on this.  good luck pushing through the rest of development, i can't way to play!

[Musenik]

Thanks! I can alway use a kind word to bolster my motivation, after 3 years of toil.

[Musenik]

Very happy to receive pro SFX from Ian Stocker of Soulcaster and Escape Goat fame. We're now close to shipping first preview copies to journalists.

Lots of editing ahead:  300+ stories for over 130,000 words.

[Musenik]

Am officially submitted to the IGF.

Hope to bring this baby to 80% in early Nov.

[Musenik]

BIG DAY for Mousechief! Here is the official (preview) video trailer for '7 Grand Steps'.

[IzzyReggie]

From your website and video, I gather the game plays sort of like single-player Mario Party (really the only comparison I can make, although I've never played Mario Party), where you advance on a 'board', and play mini-games to earn points (beads)?

I'll be watching this.

[Musenik]

Thanks IzzyReggie,

It's somewhat like that, except the gameplay challenges you to move efficiently around the wheel, so you can use your resources to empower your descendants. The only mini-games are short IF (heroic tales) and another kind of emergent story telling games played on the ruling class track.

VIDEO URL: 



hope that helps,

[Musenik]

We're making a major change to one game element, the 'day in the life of' tales. Each family experiences up to three short tales in their lifetime. Currently it's interactive, which sounds great, but because the outcomes are random, they're not as fun as they could be.

Due to some artsy-fartsy notions of the game designer (ahem) the tales were intended to let the player express the personality of the family head, of each generation. In a very boardgame-ish video game, like 7GS, gamers want to GAME not role-play. So we're going front-load these specific story interactions into an express choice of personality. Then the tales will reflect that personality.

I strongly feel that players should 'get to know' every family. Not all ancestors will be good people... We're not selling rainbow ponies here.

[IzzyReggie]

In a very boardgame-ish video game, like 7GS, gamers want to GAME not role-play.

I've made a few attempts at boardgames, and always got bogged down with trying to add role-playing. Good to see you overcame it! Maybe one day, so will I 

I strongly feel that players should 'get to know' every family. Not all ancestors will be good people... We're not selling rainbow ponies here.

I like this. The stories of bad people will generally be more interesting/dramatic than good people, anyways.

[Musenik]

Good luck, IzzyReggie. There are plenty of good boardgames with RPG elements. Dungeon is a classic.

btw, had a nice write up over at G4tv, alone with a few other, choice IGF entrants.

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/729283/igf-entrants-than-you-need-to-know-about-that-indie-column/

The official love has begun! :-)