Hi everyone! I've been working really hard on this project for the last few weeks, and have not really shown it to anyone outside of a very small group of friends yet... however, this seems like an extremely nice community and I can't stand keeping this project to myself any longer, so I'd love to share it with you guys =)
The game is called Homeland, and focuses around maintaining and protecting a player-built town. The game has two components... one component, which is the more minor one, is a simple class-based Tactical combat phase similar to Final Fantasy Tactics but with Action Point mechanics like, say, the first two Fallout games. You can control a number of units, each of which has their own set of attributes/skills/abilities, to defend your town against invaders (and potentially send them into expeditions outside the town). This component of the game is mostly secondary, and feeds into the more dominant "management" phase of the game.
The management phase of the game is where most of my effort is going, as it combines aspects of some of my favorite genres; it has elements of citybuilders, simulation, RPG, and market/trading games. The premise for this phase is that the units you control in the combat phase are no longer under your control during this phase... instead, they go off and do their own thing for the duration of each day cycle (the logic here being that, during combat, you are their "commander", but they still lead their own lives... however, units with low loyalty may fail to obey your orders in combat, or may betray you!). For example, the units will randomly go off and chop wood, or mine iron, or mine stone, or rest at home, or go hunting, or craft a sword using materials, or buy/sell at a shop, or go train, etc, using a limited number of time and action points. The shops you build in town also have owners that act as autonomous units, like the rest of your units, making buying and selling decisions as well. There are also "visitors" that come to visit your town each day and offer services, or may offer game tips, or may join your town, or, most importantly, offer cheap/uncommon goods for sale and buy your town's goods for higher prices. All autonomous units act based on their preferences: for example, Rangers prefer to hunt and units with high Mercantile skill prefer to go to the store... lazy units prefer to lounge at home or at the tavern.
The most interesting aspect of the game, in my opinion, is that all items in the game have a variable, unknown price; nobody knows for sure how much each item costs, but units can guess the price, using skills like "appraisal" and "mercantile", or through experience. Buying and selling items involves buyers and sellers exchanging bids until they come to an agreement over the price. Market shocks can cause the prices to change, and potentially so can supply/demand.
As the player, you can interact in multiple ways during management mode:
- You can buy and sell items to/from stores/units/visiting merchants by offering an ask or a bid, and bargaining the same way units do with each other (you will need to figure out the prices of the items yourself... maybe by asking visitors for tips, or by paying a unit for a skilled appraisal; otherwise, you can ask them to make an offer, but they might try to get more money out of you).
- You can hire units to do things by paying them, like to keep guard (will notify when enemies are on the way, and how soon), or maybe to craft traps and lay them around, and other things.
- You can make requests for goods... like put up a sign saying "buying up to 10 pieces of wood, paying 10 per unit". If the price is better than the store's, units will go to you instead.
- You can build buildings and occupy them with owners. You can also build watchtowers, roads, walls, and upgrade buildings.
- You can manage macro-management aspects of the game, for example setting "edicts" (general rules that units must follow, at the expense of gold or loyalty), or setting tariffs and/or subsidies to control prices/flux of goods, or setting taxes on redisents.
- Tons of other things are in the backlog of ideas for this. Won't spoil them all now =)
There is also a ton more that I haven't mentioned.
The main inspirations for the game are Majesty, Mount&Blade (the trading/management aspects of it), Uncharted Waters games (SNES) and to a very small degree Dwarf Fortress, even though I don't consider myself very fond of that game (but I think it does many things that I find interesting).
I am very enthusiastic about this project and have been working very hard on it. I have kept a blog with my progress and I update it steadily... I started recording videos of each update starting with the second week of work on the project. It's right here:
http://flavgameblog.blogspot.com/Feel free to post comments and stuff on it, but keep it polite/constructive please =).
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