next »

[Rosstin]

UPDATE: Queen At Arms will be on Steam on Feb 4th!

On Kickstarter!



Queen At Arms is a GxB dating sim built in Ren'Py. The game is about a young girl who joins a medieval army and has to survive a terrible civil war. In order to live, you have to make tough decisions, similar to Telltale's Walking Dead series.




Character lineup:


Eventually you become the army's de-facto commander, and you must manage the morale of your men and the lives of your troops in-battle.

The datable characters are the various army experts who you employ. For example, Rubus (below) is an Archmagus whose magical skills can provide clever ways to bypass obstacles in battle. James is a machinist, befriending and working with him may grant access to better weaponry for your troops. Lucius the Head Cleric is an expert in medical matters and can preserve the lives of your troops with the right medicine.

The game is composed of 4 chapters. We've finished writing the first 3 chapters, and are hard at work on the last. Our goal is to run a Kickstarter on August 15th.

As you might expect for an Otome game, we have a predominantly female team. Emily So, Meagan Trott, and Lilinn Tan are our artists and Serenity Frost is our illustrious writer.

[Rosstin]

Quadrant of 4 basic expressions of Prince Alastor.



3 characters are colored now!

[Rosstin]

GUI iteration. I wish I was better at GUIs! This game is basically 100% GUI. I'm so bad at this XD

[Rosstin]

We redid the Archmagus art to make him look less like Santa.

[Rosstin]

A debriefing of the first battle. Some new faces here.



Nick is your adoptive brother, hardened by war into a much different person than you remember from your childhood.

Fox is the army's spymaster, and little is known about him.

[Rosstin]

Notes from designing Chapter 2's battle:



The Tears River has to be really huge, scary, and impossible to cross. Canyon river? Engorged from rain?

The Sylgardian Knightess and Head Mage are blocking the Goddess Bridge that spans The Tears river. They have a brief hostile parley with you (with many choices and options) and then attempt to destroy the bridge. How? What kind of bridge is it? The Goddess Bridge is probably a massive, beautiful stone construction, possibly even placed there by the divine hand of the departed goddess in ancient times, so I don't have to worry about how it was constructed. Maybe the bridge is destroyed by gunpowder-- the first significant use of gunpowder in this world. (And your Mechanist can reverse engineer it.)

How will the protagonists cross this river?
- James the Mechanist and his crew could build pontoon bridge
- Rubus the Archmagus could freeze a section and they could run across it (dangerous if the ice breaks for any reason, men could die)
- just ford it with cavalry (men die by being swept away)

You can use your longbowmen to support the fording and distract the sylgardian men-at-arms.

You, Assistant Commander Nicholas, or Commander Berin must lead the charge across the river. Otherwise, the men will not cross. If you send Commander Berin across, he will probably die; his senility is showing and no matter how good of a fighter he is there are just too many Sylgardians. Your brother Nicholas could probably survive, but would the MC let him go alone?

After crossing the river, the Sylgardians are waiting on the other side.

vicious battle an the sylgardian side of river, direct combat with the knightess, mage. The MC and her brother MUST lead this fording, or the men WILL NOT follow.

After the battle, in Ch3 the army is forced to loot food from the Sylgardian countryside in order to survive, horror of war. This village is the same village that many of the enemy Sylgardian knights and noblemen and men-at-arms came from. As you enter, you discover that it is already being attacked by bandits-- then this ties into the aforementioned bandit plot that explains some of the enemy Sylgardian motivation for war (aside from just a desire for sovereignty)


Looking at this time period, I think I can divide the forces into 3 main groups
- Longbowmen
- Men-at-arms
- Mounted knights

[Rosstin]

Whose death will you risk?

[Rebusmind]

Very interesting project.

The art is very good, although I like the raw pencil drawings a bit better than the colored ones (maybe because they look more fragile/elegant?). Keep up the good work!

btw. I also like the GUI so far, I mean as you said, the game is mostly about those choices you make, so they should get a lot of space. And by putting the characters at both sides of it, it still looks coherent.

[Rosstin]

Very interesting project.

The art is very good, although I like the raw pencil drawings a bit better than the colored ones (maybe because they look more fragile/elegant?). Keep up the good work!

btw. I also like the GUI so far, I mean as you said, the game is mostly about those choices you make, so they should get a lot of space. And by putting the characters at both sides of it, it still looks coherent.

Thank you so much Rebus!

By the way, if anyone is attending GDC 2014, we are going to rent a sound studio on March 19, 20, 21, or 22 to do voice-acting for Queen At Arms. This is just going to be partial voice-acting, so there will only be about 20 lines for each character. If you've ever wanted to be a voice actor, contact me at asterazul at gmail dot com and let's talk!

[Rosstin]

Art critique time.

Left or Right?

[Rebusmind]

I'd say right, because it creates a better contrast between the hair and the clothes. The left looks a bit like the colors have been sucked out of it.

[Rosstin]

I'd say right, because it creates a better contrast between the hair and the clothes. The left looks a bit like the colors have been sucked out of it.

Thanks Rebus!

NEW SCREENSHOTS AND IT'S NOT EVEN SATURDAY

[Rebusmind]

Wow, someone's been busy.

I've got one suggestion: instead of showing the portrait of the person speaking in the text box, I'd recommend an often used method for conversations in this kind of games. Just darken the artworks of those characters that are not speaking a bit and it should be clear who's speaking without having to display another portrait. The screen seems less cluttered that way.

[Rosstin]

Wow, someone's been busy.

I've got one suggestion: instead of showing the portrait of the person speaking in the text box, I'd recommend an often used method for conversations in this kind of games. Just darken the artworks of those characters that are not speaking a bit and it should be clear who's speaking without having to display another portrait. The screen seems less cluttered that way.

That's an interesting suggestion, Rebus! Thank you!

Lilin Tan (our linework artist) just banged out a lineup of all characters. Yes, we had the art before but now we're resizing everything to match up properly.

Full Resolution Link (Warning: HUUUUUUUUUGE)

[DrSchizo]

That looks really nice.

I had a look at Ren'Py and it seems rather complicated to use, especially if there are a lot of available paths. Isn't that too complicated?

[Rosstin]

That looks really nice.

I had a look at Ren'Py and it seems rather complicated to use, especially if there are a lot of available paths. Isn't that too complicated?

Hm, I don't think so. It's no harder to use than any other game engine. Easier than most.

Managing multiple paths is just a matter of being logical and having a good model of player agency. For example, Queen At Arms has a specific focus. Primarily, you want to win the war and survive.

In Chapter 1, the player must decide why she is fighting in this war. Is she fighting for Orthera? To protect Sylgard? To protect the other soldiers she has met? One thing she can choose, is to simply run away from this war, to stop fighting. In this particular game, I've allowed the player to choose to quit right there, to run away and live a safe life. So, yes, you can do that, but there isn't an extensive plotline for that path. You just get a simple ending, that you decided to live a quiet life away from the horror and glory of war. From that point in the plot onward, I'm assuming that the player/protagonist is committed to the war.

In other chapters, you often get a choice as to *how* to approach challenges. Who do you use to complete a challenge? Do you fight, do you use trickery, do you talk? There's a mix of linearity and options. It's not an easy tightrope to walk, but it can be done. Look at Telltale's The Walking Dead, Heavy Rain, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. Your choices have consequences but they also don't cause the plot to enter into a combinatorial explosion.

Not that it's always easy to avoid combinatorial explosion. Things can get pretty crazy. But that's what narrative-based game design is all about: managing player agency against the narrative and striking a balance that is satisfying.

Check out Cinders by Moacube for a good example of this. Cinders does a pretty decent job of making you feel like you're in control and giving you significant choices in your own destiny, without allowing the player to completely redefine the narrative. Whenever the player is making a choice, they're usually aware of the significance of the choice and the possible consequences, and things play out in a very satisfying way. You don't always meet your objectives, but you never feel like you were prevented by bad writing or lack of options.

[Rosstin]

[Rosstin]

IT'S A LOGOOOOO

[Rosstin]

New title screen! I'm trying to code this screen so that it shows a random boy and a random background.

[Rebusmind]

I like the main menu and the idea behind it, but I would prefer if the character would face to the middle of the screen and not away from it. I don't know if it's just me, but stuff like this makes the screen look 'unsettled' (don't know if that's the proper word) to me.
Hope you know what I mean.