This looks like a cool project! I'm a fan of roguelikes of all sorts, I like your take on this, and the game seems promising. I'd like for it to succeed, and in fact I registered on this board because I wanted to voice my support (and criticism).
Hi Endoperez, thanks for the effort of signing up to voice your questions. We appreciate it!
If someone only goes through the first page, they'll see:
A game in which a white man goes to pseudo-Africa...
The first screenshot of your combat system shows black men in loincloths, one of them dead, and a white hero, Nikola Tesla, unleashing science on the wild beasts...
No female explorers...
You can only have one famous leader in your trek, that's why the screenshot only shows one 'famous westener'. We currently have an even amount of female and male explorers in the game. You can also find more information about this in
this blog post.
I had to go to page 8 to find more on how you're going to handle racism, and IMO that's not good enough when it's such a controversial issue.
Your game will likely get quite a bit of attention when you release a playable demo, whether it's for public or for private group (if you have one already I haven't found it yet), so I believe you should at that point have some sort of FAQ or extended description on your page that also covers these concenrns people might have. If all goes well and your game goes hugely viral and gets tens of thousands of views, well, someone's going to be asking tough questions... so it'd be nice if you had ready answers.
Good points. We will update our website soon, as we plan to start with the paid alpha at the end of this year and will also be adding more information what features we still have planned, what type of content to expect and how we plan to handle certain aspects. We'll also make an effort to update the first post of this thread soon.
Here are some things I think you could have to give some thought:
ATM your porters are a resource, and black. Can you have white porters who are used in the exact same manner (it seems the Occultist, at least, can)? Will all porters from all the villages you get all be considered to be the same, or will they have their own cliques?
In terms of gameplay systems the trek consists of one leader and various characters. These characters can be natives or people from the outside world. They all have names, comment on things and have strengths and weaknesses. We're trying to make an conscious effort not to make a distinction in power between these members of your trek. If anything we see the native people as far more capable to deal with the dangers of the territory than your inexperienced western party members. Currently there is also no specific 'porter' class. All party members have a capacity for carrying crates and this role is not specifically reserved for native party members. So the impression of just being 'resources' is not correct, unless that's specifically how you want to (role) play the game, but mechanically they are not more of a resource than any other character in the game. We'll try to articulate this better in the future.
Also we're keeping the trek relatively small so that you'll be able to relate to every member individually, whether they're being from an indigenous tribe or from Great Britain. We plan to have different native tribes with their own characteristics, and have already experimented somewhat in this direction, but the current build does not contain this feature as we're currently focussing on other systems.
Will all the explorations take place in a continent populated by black people, or is it possible to find natives who look like Asians, or Europeans or others? I understand it'd be a lot more work, so I totally understand if you think you can't do it.
We hope to send you on expeditions all over the globe. So far our tile sets are generic version of jungle land and drylands and some other more bizarre terrains. We're not making references to specific countries or actual tribes, but keep this part a bit more generic and random. It would make absolutely sense for you to encounter all kinds of native people, also with different looks.
The butterfly generation seems awesome. You should totally use something like that to generate procedural clothing for the native cultures! I understand that most of them will just be standing still on the village screen, so randomizing cloth patterns on the villagers seems like it might be a feasible option.
Thanks! We like our butterfly generation too, even though we're still nailing down the exact gameplay. It's important for us to have a representation of scientific engangement in our game. Whether it being discovering new animals or cartographing uncharted territory.
We already thought about using procedural systems for creating random character portraits, but its not high on our priority list currently.
I also have a gameplay question; what's your "game over" condition? If you have two specialists and one dies, can the second one continue to lead the exploration? In FTL, for example, you might theoretically finish the game with an entirely different crew, with none of the originals surviving.
Currently you always have one specialist and he can't die. He is supposed to be your over arching narrator and companion throughout the campaign. Other members of your trek can be leveled up too and taken onto multiple expeditions, but they are also prone to injuries, madness or even death, so you will have a hard time keeping the same party alive and will more than likely end the campaign with a completely different group than you started.
The fail condition for an expedition is that your whole trek succumbs into madness, which happens when you take too long for completing your expedition. We haven't nailed this part down yet, but one idea is that the resources that you invested into the expedition are lost, but you still may continue your main campaign and start another expedition. The campaign is where you string together mutliple expeditions and unlock new destinations to explore. Watch out though, since your rivals are also exploring and might discover that ancient amulet before you and get all the fame.
I hope I was able to answer your questions and didn't overlook anything. Let me know if you have more questions. Thanks again for taking the time!
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