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Community / DevLogs / Re: Tempest Citadel
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on: April 01, 2018, 12:59:39 PM
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Release Date is set to April 17th! Tempest Citadel on SteamI've sent out some keys on Keymailer and it's had some great feedback from Twitch and Youtube. Lots of ideas for polish that were missed despite a busy Beta and QA run. I've been patching in a few extras, like ability to save entire Squad Loadouts for use later, and voice acting in the battles... but otherwise it seems very stable with days of playtime now on the clock. As always I will endeavour to make a "quicker game" next time - this one has run to 3 years off and on. The most I can hope for is it brings in enough money to pay for the next game  |
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Community / DevLogs / Re: Tempest Citadel
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on: March 12, 2018, 02:53:59 PM
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Happy to say that Tempest Citadel is now 100% Finished and ready for release in April. Tempest Citadel on SteamIt has been a pleasure to work with so many gifted artists, musicians, actors and writers on this project - their input really lifted my spirits and provided inspiration in the several years this game has been in dev. And in more recent months it's been great getting input from experienced QA and Beta testers to polish the game up and make it easy to learn. While I'm ready to leap into the next project, I've blocked out some time for the 1.01 patch! |
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Community / DevLogs / Re: Tempest Citadel
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on: July 09, 2016, 10:54:48 AM
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Scavenging was a big part of my plans for this game, what you scavenge and how to maximise your base and army based on production from your salvage. It's meant to be a big min-max optimisation game where you can balance immediate gains from munitions against slow-burn investments in R&D and crew morale...
...anyhow - the Scavenging screenshot shown occurs after your squad has captured a bunker on the planet surface. The actual image shown is a fully revealed base shown from the side, with a maze of caverns, tunnels, and built up rooms underground to protect them from the storms. In normal play you enter from the top and uncover rooms as you explore. You have limited time and resources to explore - and come up against obstacles such as cyber-locks and caveins.
The mini-game strategy here comes down to decisions like - do I spend 10 Scav Points carefully picking this lock, or spend one point and a bunch of explosives on clearing the way - at the risk of major cave-ins and damage to the loot in nearby rooms.
Once you reveal a new room you can see if it is a lab, store, torture chamber - whatever - and then you can spend a few more Scav Points to thoroughly search the room and send all the goodies up to load on your drop ship to take back to the Citadel.
It's all fast paced, so a few clicks determine your search of the bunker and you're out of there. But a bit more tactical than a simple loot drop. Inspired a bit by the Deus Ex HR hacking minigame.
At a higher level your success in Scavenging comes down to picking good crew from cryo-sleep, training and equiping them and adding them to your squad. There is a big bonus to having some dedicated scavs and medics on your squad in addition to the soldiers, eg: if you can beat the mission with a mixed team you will get better results from the scav mini-game and fewer permanent wounds on your crewmembers.
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Community / DevLogs / Re: Tempest Citadel
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on: July 08, 2016, 05:27:37 AM
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The team is myself, and I've outsourced a few artists and sound guys, and a couple of story writers. The majority of the art is made myself, but the portraits, posters and GUI had the professional treatment. I grew up making games in the 80s on Amiga, (a big inspiration for this game was Deuteros of that era). Then I worked in graphics for Lionhead (In their satellite studio Intrepid). Back then I worked on the first XBox hardware making fire and water effects. After that I struck out independantly - not on a game, but on easy 3D modelling software Curvy 3D making sketch based models. Then back into the industry, I worked on some early wave 3D mobiles games (NGage days) like Colin McRae Rally 2005, and a Final Fantasy mobile spinoff. Spending time crunching huge PS and PS2 games into teeny tiny mobile 3D. Last one I worked on was a Metal Gear mobile game. Around that time I worked on my first big indie game "Light of Altair", followed by "Spice Road" both 3D strategy games, Spice Road being an economics sim with light warfare. And I've interspersed that with a bunch of little Flash games like Slice Fortress Defense 2I've found my small Flash games can have the most intense skill and strategy pressure on the player, so I'm trying to carry some of that over to a larger game, while having fun with the graphics too. |
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Community / Townhall / Spice Road - Strategy Trade Empire Game Released
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on: November 21, 2013, 02:46:18 PM
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18th Century ‘Spice Road’ On PC Invites Players To Explore Exotic And Dangerous LandsThrive & Survive In Realistic Strategy SimulatorIndependent developer and publisher ‘Aartform Games’ is proud to announce the long-awaited release of their highly anticipated 18th century ‘Spice Road’ strategy game. Deep in the mountains and deserts of central Asia, where life is hard and death is sudden, thin trails of gold, silk and spice trace a web between the industrial forges of the West, and the exotic climates of the East. Your task, playing the role of a colonial governor, is to establish a thriving community in a time of war and discovery. Featuring 20 challenging missions with unlockable skills and upgrades for the sandbox mode, you are responsible for controlling every aspect of peace, growth, and upkeep of your town. From palaces to monasteries, to trade posts and smugglers dens, ‘Spice Road’ offers it all! Expanding your empire while keeping the peace is not an easy task as nobles, monks, merchants, and even rogues all want a piece of the land.  ‘Spice Road’ offers countless hours of addictive gameplay focused on economic and trading simulation. Build a network of farms, mines and caravan routes, and scout the map to discover rare and exotic goods for export. Compete against cunning corporate rivals, defeat greedy bandits (or resort to bribery), and raid caravans and rage war on opponent cities! With its great graphics, advanced features, immersive environments and realistic simulation, this feature-packed strategy game has it all, including a popular and very active Steam Greenlight project page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=148477186‘Spice Road’ is available to try or buy from the following link: http://www.aartformgames.com/games/spice-roadYouTube Trailer: TIGSource DevLog: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8506.0
About Aartform GamesAartform Games is an independent game development studio based in London, UK, owned and run by Simon F.C. de Rivaz. Simon has been in the games industry for more than a decade, and has won the highly acclaimed BAFTA award for the 3D-Mobile game Colin McRae Rally 2005.
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Developer / Playtesting / Spice Road Demo
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on: May 16, 2013, 06:58:32 AM
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Please try the Spice Road Demo and let me know how you get on, Play the first 5 levels from the game here: Download the Spice Road Demo 54MBTo play further (11 Playable Missions with hours of fun Trading, Town Building and Economic Simulation) and use the Sandbox scenario generator just Preorder and play in the full Beta version.      About Spice RoadDeep in the mountains and deserts of central Asia, where life is hard and death is sudden, thin trails of gold, silk and spice trace a web between the industrial forges of the West and the exotic climes of the East. You are a colonial governor in the 18th Century, building a town on the Spice Road in a time of war and discovery. More than spice travels your roads – musket armies, philosophies, and power plays that span the globe are at your control. From palace to monastry, trade post to smugglers den – your town is worthless without the nobles, monks, merchants and rogues that chose to live in it – and keeping them all happy at the same time is never simple. - The Best City Building and Business Simulation on the 18th Century Alt-History Silk Road
- Complex Society and Consumer Economy
- Complex and Shifting Environment to Nurture and Grow
- Large Scale Trade Networks Spanning Continents
- Fun Strategic Trading with Exotic Cargo
- War Games against your Competition
Spice Road uses the StormRaid™ engine to deliver a beautiful fully 3D rendered world on high-end DirectX® graphics cards on PC. |
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Community / DevLogs / Re: Spice Road
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on: March 26, 2013, 12:59:54 PM
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New features in the free Spice Road 0.200 BetaAdding to the RPG feel of the Campaign missions I've added a raft of Skills and Abilities that the player can upgrade as they complete mission objectives. These range from simple utilities like reducing supplies required on a caravan route, to new tactical abilities like the ability to perform a lightning raid on an enemy town for loot. Also new is the first take on a Sandbox, where you can customise and generate new maps to play on, and the addition of a Hard Mode to challenge even a well upgraded player. Here is an example Tech-Tree for Security. 
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Community / DevLogs / Re: Procedurally generated stealth game (with playable alpha)
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on: February 17, 2013, 07:51:29 AM
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Played a few levels and having fun. A couple of ideas - Menu font had little black pixels in outline, looked rough. - And you could turn the "comments & ideas" URL into a clickable button that opens the webpage. I don't know why Fuel changed to Food, but then again a general sense of confusion seems to be the aim  I look forward to having another go at this later. |
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Community / DevLogs / Re: Spice Road
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on: February 17, 2013, 07:08:24 AM
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@dbest Thanks. Most of the work has been on the underlying systems, the economy and trade network. Now these systems are working it is relatively straight forward to write missions based on the mechanics. In fact I've already got 20 missions planned just introducing the main buildings and mechanics - after that the player should be competent to take on sandbox missions and compete with other players for highscores on different maps.
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